1 10 21 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/abaa3b968d2b605afef2a38d68db5f33.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=l7RqmxC03awMfXIZksJ0pbt6kQfJBeBbMRCfFcmYEvvFg804amYBXAM-WAuUU9BiXVxvrgHXF415CP5KAayGqJkCHeEoVlkL24836xuYU%7Etm7OfcIC66AhkLMq1ijbW-tceRciAWEeuuyr9h2ix0w1mJOmZMetWPUN36UV9dTlcCv5L6cBJDcTVjw6R6H2s9TMLzcw7FHMn-fiGIAOLPmvuczrcSXF6s8SDqH6tO3s5PlWAhdGGXKIVPJfAHBgMlVspv6iDoHWT%7Epat06Zb4NzXnWIFgAD3ZQkbFKK6FAOoLnNg9n2VEzMvwJQQ8R4zC66iKjptlXkPj6Yf1x0zp3g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d50665091f5b7b4de90cf53fb8d649b7 PDF Text Text Price One Penny. T4O/ POLITICS for the PEOPLE.—No. I. MINING RENTS — AND — ROYALTIES. By J. MORRISON DAVIDSON, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. Author of “Eminent Radicals,” “The New Book of Kings," “Book of Lords,” “ Useless, Dangerous, and Ought to be I I For Special Prices for quantities to distribute in to the Publishers. I Abolished,” &c., &c. Mining Districts apply LONDON : I THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C. agAgent for U.S.A, W. L. Rosenberg, 261, East Tenth Street, New \ ork City. �The Co-operative Commonwealth: Exposition of Modern Socialism. Gronlund, of Philadelphia. paper, price is. an By Laurence Demy 8-vo., cheaper edition, “ The book, while just as readable and captivating as Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, is far more logical and thoughtful: at the same time, it is in a masterly manner adapted to the Anglo-Saxon public.”—New York Volkszeitung (one of the largest Socialist papers in America). “ The best account of German or State Socialism in English.”—New York Sun (the largest capitalist newspaper in the States). “The grandest and highest minded statement of Socialism I have ever seen.”—H. D. Wright, Chief of Massachussetts Bureau of Labour Statistics. The Emigration Fraud Exposed. By H. M. Hyndman. With a portrait of the Author. Reprinted by permission from the Nineteenth Century for February, 1885. Crown 8-vo., price id. The Socialist Catechism. By J. L. Joynes. Reprinted with additions from Justice. price id. Fifteenth thousand. Socialism and the Worker. Sorge. Price id. Royal 8-vo., By F. A. An explanation in the simplest language of the main idea of Socialism. The Appeal to the Young. By Prince Peter Kropotkin. Translated from the French by H. M. Hyndman and reprinted from Justice. Royal 8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny. Tenth thousand. The most eloquent and noble appeal to the generous emotions ever pen­ ned by a scientific man. Its author has just suffered five years imprison­ ment at the hands of the French Republic for advocating the cause of the workers. Are You a Social-Democrat ? tinted paper. "Why 4-pp., on fine Price 5s. per 1,000, post free. am a Social-Democrat. I 4-pp., on fine tinted paper. Price 5s. per 1,000, post free. The above with announcement of Lectures, meetings, &c., printed on last page, 8s. per 1,000, 28s. for 5,000. The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C. And YNL L. ROSENBERG, 261, East Tenth Street, New York City. �MINING RENTS AND ROYALTIES. F there be one thing in this world more astonishing than that individuals should claim private property in the surface of this planet, and have their claims allowed by the Legislature of a free country, it assuredly is that they should pretend to have a right to the contents of its interior. A coal-hewer descends into the bowels of the cold earth, and with infinite toil and danger raises a ton of fuel for tenpence or even eightpence. Another man, calling himself a landlord, who is meanwhile, perchance, gambling at Monaco or bear-hunting in the Rocky Mountains, successfully exacts a toll of thirteen or fourteen pence per ton on the entire output of a mine, or, it may be, a score of mines ! Could there be a more startlinganomaly ? “ O Lord what fools these mortals be ! ” is all the comment that any rational being can, in the circumstances, make. I �4 Yet this was the kernel of the case which the influential deputation of Members of Parliament, who, in April, 1886, brought the question of mining royal­ ties before the Liberal Home Secretary, had to sub­ mit. True, Mr. Childers’ mind was a taint la 1 asa as regards mining royalties, and not one of the deputation ventured to suggest their nationalisation —the only true remedy for the serious evils com­ plained of. Still much good was effected by the bare recital of the atrocious exactions which the land­ lords habitually make both on mine lessees and miners. Mr. Stephen Mason, representing one of the divisions of Lanarkshire, where trade depression is peculiarly severe, instanced the case of a ducal high­ wayman who preys on the mining industry of the district to the extent of ^114,000 per annum. His method of blackmail is this :—He benignly grants leases for twenty-one years at fixed “ rents,” varying from Z500 to ,£5,000. These are payable whether the mine is worked or not. If worked, the moment a certain output is attained “ royalties ” come into play. These vary from çd. to is. 6d. per ton. No mediaeval Rhine robber ever devised a more effectual system of brigandage. Indeed, the landlord is the undisputed master of the situation, and it is a marvel that he has not succeeded long ere now in completely �5 destroying the industrial supremacy of the country. Mr. Mason told of an instance where a company spent ^50,000 to get at a seam of coal. They reached it, but found that rent and royalty would together absorb every penny of profit. The land­ lord would, nevertheless, have his entire pound of flesh. Consequently the machinery has been stand­ ing idle for four years ! But it is when leases come to be renewed that the landlords’ harvest is really ripe. Mr. Conybeare, who represents a mining division of Cornwall, revealed a state of things in his neighbourhood of a singularly aggravated kind. When the lease of the Dolcoath mine was renewed a fine of ,£2 5,000 was exacted, The Duke of Bedford, in the case of the Devon Great Consols Mine, levied a £20,000 fine. As for the unfortunate lessees they might like it or lump it. If they lumped it their engine-houses and all their improvements went to the landlord without compensation. The landlord, moreover, on the ground-rent monopoly principle, charged from five to ten times agricultural value for the surface. As to the amount ofannual tribute paid by the nation on its mineral wealth to the landlords, no exact figures can be given. But it is has been estimated that in the year 1883 they pocketed on coal and iron ore alone the vast sum of eight millions sterling. This enor­ �mous drain in the face of falling and stagnant mar­ kets, it is not too much to say accounts for half the privations which working men are now suffering from low wages and no wages. Our two staple industries are admittedly iron and coal. They are controlling elements in rails, ships, and manufactures of every description. Every private toll levied on them is a blight on every related form of employment. Mr. Mason gave an instructive example of the effect of a comparatively low royalty. In Scotland the minimum royalty on pig-iron is 6s. Some of the Cleveland royalties on the other hand do not exceed 3s. 3d. per ton. What is the con­ sequence ? Scotland, where all the other conditions of production are rather more than equal, is invaded weekly by Cleveland iron to the extent of from 6,000 to 7,000 tons. Nor is this the worst. Differential home dues might be endured, but to handicap the British iron trade in its strenuous grapple with foreign competition is a much more serious affair. In most parts of Germany the royalty on pig iron is 6d. per ton ; in France it is 8d., and in both these countries royalties are national dues, and not, as with us, private black­ mail. In Belgium the ordinary State royalty is is. 3d. per ton, and even that handicap not improbably accounts in no small degree for the pre­ valent turbulence in that country of miners. �7 I quote the following weighty sentences from an admirable address by Mr. William Forsyth, the eloquent President of the Scottish Land Restoration League:—“Out of the eighty blast furnaces in Cumberland forty are at this moment standing idle, and the others are but partially employed. There are many causes which might have the effect of keeping these forty blast furnaces idle. They might be idle for want of capital; they might be idle for want of men willing to work. Well, gentlemen, the Cumberland furnaces are put out not because of any lack of capital, for only within the last week or two a company of employers there were willing to sink £20,000 in raising iron-ore, and were only prevented from doing so by the landlord’s ultimatum that he would not reduce his royalty of 2s. 6d. per ton on the ore which might be raised. The company found thatwith this charge they could not raise ore as cheaply as it could be imported from Spain, and they, therefore, abandoned their project. Neither can it be that there are not men able and willing to work, for an ironmaster in Cumberland writes saying that there are thousands of men unemployed who would be glad to find work of any kind in order to save their wives and children from starvation.” “ I am informed that the girders of the St. Enoch Railway Station, in our city, were imported from j �8 Belgium, and we know that the Barnsley Railway Station was built of imported iron. ’ The Midland Railway Company is at present importing large quantities of iron and steel sleepers from Belgium. The streets of London, Liverpool, Dublin, and Belfast are being laid with tramway rails of foreign manufacture. Our Glasgow Municipal Buildings are at this moment being built with iron girders brought from Belgium, and paid for from the taxes collected from the people of Glasgow. On looking up at these girders we see in prominent letters the name “ Maclellan,” and in our innocence we think that if the cost of these buildings is great at any rate the work is done by our own people. But this is not so. The ironmaster to whom I have referred is himself the owner of eight furnaces specially adapted to the manufacture of pig-iron and steel rails. Four of these furnaces are idle, and yet he is actually importing thousands of tons of iron and steel from Belgium and Germany.” Talk of high wages and short hours of labour “ driving trade out of the country ! ” Why, if these royalty footpads are not speedily got rid of there will soon be neither trade nor wages left in it. One blast furnace produces in a week six hundred tons of pig-iron. On that quantity the landlord’s royalties amount to ^202 ; while the wages of the employes �9 —managers, engineers, chemists, workmen all told— average less than one half, or ^95. The royalties on British steel rails paid to the landlords amount to 9s. 6d. per ton ; in Belgium they average is. 9d. Is it any wonder that the Indian Department of Government is monthly sending out to India thou­ sands of tons of imported iron and steel rails and sleepers ? Is it any wonder if in most cases it costs about three times as much to construct a mile of British railway as any other ? A Cunard liner making the double or return jour­ ney across the Atlantic consumes four thousand one hundred and twenty-five tons of coal. This means a royalty to the landlord of ^206 5s., or more than the wages of the entire crew from captain to cabin boy. Ina word, the owners of steamers pay to the lords of land a tribute of ,£274,100 per annum. Of course passengers and the producers of exports and the consumers of imports are the ultimate victims. What, then, is the remedy for this ruinous system of exploitation ? Is it to be cured, as the deputation suggested, and as Mr. Conybeare’s Mining Rates Bill weakly proposes, by establishing a sliding scale as between landlords and mine-lessees ? Certainly not, unless the State is to step into the landlord’s shoes. Every scheme to enable landlords to rob in moderation is bad. �IO We are not without examples of the true solution of the royalty problem in other lands. In Germany, speaking generally, the Prussian law of 1865 prevails. It vests all mineral royalties in the State. No freeholder can raise minerals on his freehold without a concession from the Government. He dare not even, after due notice, prevent private persons irom entering on his land to bore for the discovery of minerals. The concessionaire of a mine is entirely independent of the lord of the surface. Concessions are made to any qualified person or persons by a district oberbergamt, or office, on certain conditions. Concessionaires must (1) pay to the State in royalty and inspection dues 2 per cent, per annum on net produce ; and (2) form a- Benefit Society, or Knappschajt Verein, for their workmen, they contributing one-half the funds, the “ hands ” the other. The Knappschaft Verein supports and doctors invalid and injured miners, pensions widows, and educates children free of expense. In France private royalties were abolished at the Revolution and made national property. The pre­ sent law bears date 1810. It is the same in principle as the German law. The concessionaire pays 5 per cent, net produce to the State plus 10 centimes per franc additional to form an Accidents Relief Fund. A strictly limited rent is also payable to the lords of the surface. �11 The Belgian law (1810) is in the main similar to the French law', but concessions made under the law of 1837 are of a less favourable character, and in some cases the dues mount up to 4s. in the pound. But we need not go beyond the limits of our own Islands for a sound model of mining legislation. An admirable Act of the Scottish Parliament (1592) still in force, but audaciously set at defiance by the land­ lords of Scotland since the union with England, appoints a “ Master of the Metals,” with full State control of all mines and minerals in the realm. He is to secure 10 per cent, to the State, and is allowed 5 per cent, for inspection dues, &c. “ And by reason that the said miners are in daily hazard of their lives by the bad air of the mines and the danger of falling in the same, and other infinite miseries which daily occur in the said work, therefore our Sovereign Lord (James VI.) exempts said miners from all taxa­ tion whatever, both in peace and war, and takes them all, their families and goods, in his special protection,” &c. This is the sort of thing that is wanted, and not sliding scales to. give perpetuity to a system of pal pable robbery, by which the State is defrauded of some ten millions sterling per annum. And the robbers ! �12 What are they ? The drones of the community ! They feed on the mechanic’s labour ; The starved hind for them compels the stubborn glebe To yield its unshared harvest. And yon squalid form, leaner than fleshless misery, Drags out his life in darkness in the unwholesome mine To glad their grandeur. Many faint with toil That few may know the cares and woes of sloth. r � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Mining rents and royalties Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Davidson, John Morrison [1843-1916] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 12, [4] p. ; 19 cm. Series title: Politics for the People Series number: No. 1 Notes: Publisher's advertisement p. 2. List of reviews of 'The New Book of Kings', by the author, on four unnumbered pages at the end. Tentative date of publication from KVK. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1885?] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T401 Subject The topic of the resource Working conditions Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Mining rents and royalties), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Mining Royalties Social conditions Socialism Working Classes https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/8899bef81859b5fc9cc65c3c51911504.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=qfnAn5dijRfCx0z19jxEU9AhlVHerKf8K2hRK0WVUgRGceSTsLog9plOdUua1w%7E%7Elnk0xCIVJgkexfwI9X6e5wEmgXdE1jN1cA3mp93MMmKAIw3BEdeA0wZxe8bf1H0DkSoyh5bZJF%7ExJN7rYh1Kb0byckhitc-8iwfj3cqE8-w7NSlaxe39jyNgaD1KE3Jhvu3%7E5a4UZOUBncz73Q5QZYkx6PDzRajWfROLoi4p1LZr4rCoY2GSRdGtrVKLo8LIu8TkGXpkzYUusg75jURGxnQCkONEzlGab0raBpjvBtkVbtBtrprr5v6bPTxMAhlIMWiqhlwWTIKjW2LDPhGXXg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 1590b35f31ab4ac8c7b0436856512bd0 PDF Text Text PRICE ONE PENNY. Oh Slaves of these laborious years, Oh Freemen of the years to be : Shake off your blind and foolish fears, And hail the Truth that makes you free. WHAT A COMPULSORY 8 Hour Working Day MEANS By TO THE TOM WORKERS. Mi .zV TV ’2V , (Amalgamated Engineers). THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C. Agent for U.S.A., W. L. ROSENBERG, 261, EAST TENTH STREET, NEW YORK CITY. �The Emigration Fraud Exposed. By H. M. Hyndman. With a portrait of the Author. Reprinted by permission from the Nineteenth Century for February, 1885. Crown 8-vo., price id. The Socialist Catechism. By J. L. Joynes. Reprinted with additions from Justice. price id. Fifteenth thousand. Socialism and the Worker. Sorge. Royal 8-vo., By F. A. Price id. An explanation in the simplest language of the main idea of Socialism. The Working Man’s Programme (Arbeiter Programm). By Ferdinand Lassalle. Translated from the German by Edward Peters. Crown 8-vo., paper cover, price 6d. Social Progress and Individual Effort. Desirable Mansions. Co-operative Production. By Edward Carpenter. Price id. each. The Appeal to the Young. By Prince Peter Kropotkin. Translated from the French by H. M. Hyndman and reprinted from Justice. Royal 8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny. Tenth thousand. The most eloquent and noble appeal to the generous emotions ever pen­ ned by a scientific man. Its author has just suffered five years imprison­ ment at the hands of the French Republic for advocating the cause of the workers. John Williams and the History of the Social-Democratic Federation. 8-vo., price id. With portrait. Royal The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C. And W. L. ROSENBERG, 261, East Tenth Street, New York City. �EIGHT HOURS A DAY. -------------- ♦-------------- HE appalling amount of distress that exists in every town in Britain must arrest the atten­ tion of all duty loving men and women. No one who sees the effects of want and the fear of want can passively behold the dire poverty of a large section of the workers. Rather will he probe and probe until he finds the cause of the disease. Socialists have probed and they find the disease of WANT to be spread by the profit-making system upon which all industry and Society itself is based. They know that five or six centuries ago, without machinery, Englishmen obtained for their work sufficient to keep them in vigorous health and that they were not subject to periodical trade depressions; and when they further reflect upon the fact that the working day then consisted of no more than eight* hours, no wonder that Socialists are discontented with the present state of affairs, and that they resolve to use every means in their power to replace the present discord, misery, and anarchy, with harmony, happiness, and order. The effect of our so-called labour-saving machinery (used really by its owners to save wages and not labour) is to cause continual distress amongst the workers by mercilessly throwing them out of employment without any compensation. It may then take a man often * See “Work and Wages” by Thorold Rogers, M.P. �months, sometimes years, to find an occupation of any kind and when found it is at a price much below that he was in receipt of before the machine disturbed him. Yet the machine has increased the ease and rapidity of wealth-production. This increase of wealth is of course enriching some one—a class of which many perform but little really useful work while the bulk of them serve no function useful in any way to the community. Look, again, at the effect of increased Scientific Knowledge. By a better knowledge of Chemistry and Metallurgy tons of metal are now extracted from the ore with the labour of fewer men than must formerly have been employed to produce one hundredweight. What I am concerned about is, that in spite of our advanced methods of producing wealth, the workers as a class get only a subsistence wage, whilst an increasing number of them cannot get the barest necessaries of life. Optimist Politicians are unwilling to admit that this is so. Anxious to make out a good case for the present basis of Society, they ignore the plainest of facts, so in confirmation of my contention I will quote from one or two non-Socialists. Professor Thorold Rogers, the present M.P. for Bermondsey, says on pages 185-6 of “ Six Centuries of Work and Wages,” written in 1884. It may be well the case, and there is every reason to fear it is the case, that there is collected a population in our great towns which equals in extent the whole of those who lived in England andfWales six centuries ago; but whose condition is more destitute, whose homes are more squalid, whose means are more uncertain, whose prospects are more hopeless than those of the poorest serfs of the Middle Ages and the meanest drudges of the mediaeval cities. The arm of the law is strong enough to keep them under, and Society has no reason to fear their despair; but I refuse to accept the superficial answer that a man is an admirer of the good old times because he insists that the vaunts of civilisation should be examined along with, and not apart from its failures. It is not possible to give the solution of one problem, the growth of opulence, and to refuse all attention to the other problem, the growth of penury. Joseph Cowen M.P. speaking at a Mechanics’ Institute at Newcastle, alluded to the labouring section as “ a hybrid class doomed to eat the bread of penury and drink the cup of misery. Precarious labour provided them with subsistence for the day, but the slightest �5 interruption threw them destitute. A week of broken weather brought thousands of these industrial nomads to the brink of starvation. An inscrutable influence seemed to sink them as it elevated those around and above them. Society, ashamed and despairing, swept them, like refuse, into dismal receptacles, where seething in their wretchedness, they constituted at once our weakness and reproach. How to sweeten these receptacles and help their forlorn occupants to help themselves was the problem of the hour. If Society did not settle it, it would in time settle Society.” To this Socialists answer that there is no permanent way of sweetening the lives of the class referred to except by the complete annihilation of the profit-mongers as a class, by forcing them all into the ranks of the useful workers. This will be apparent when it is realised that under the present system we are working to supply profits to profit-mongers instead of working to supply the legitimate requirements of the entire community, and when it is borne in mind that Shareholders and Employers are contented with nothing less than the Highest possible profits, it will also be seen that on the other hand we (the workers) can have nothing more than the lowest possible wages. To establish Society nn a proper basis is therefore the work of every rightminded man or woman. Demagogues have been at work—with good inten­ tions perhaps—but they have misled the workers from the true cause of their troubles. Among the blind leaders of the blind may be mentioned the Malthusians, the Teetotallers, the Financial Reformers, and wellintentioned Radicals. The first mentioned have taught that there are too many people in the country, and that the only way of bettering our condition is by curtailing the population, and this in face of the fact that every year wealth in this country is increasing much faster than population. The Temperance advocates hammer away at the blessings of sobriety as though drunkenness was the cause of poverty, when the fact is the other Way about. Well nigh as fast as they surround an old toper with influences that prevent his drinking tastes �6 being gratified, another fills up the hole out of which he was lifted. It is a useless expenditure of energy to be continually preaching temperance and thrift. Let all be blest with leisure, food, and healthy enjoyments, as they might be if the economic basis of Society was as it should be, and then these matters will all right themselves. The only reason people spend time upon these panaceas is because they fail to understand the law of wages, which is that all above a bare subsistence wage shall go to profit mongers as profit. The only way out is to destroy the profit mongers. The same argument applies to the financial reformer. All sensible persons are of course agreed that the country should be governed as economically as is con­ sistent with efficiency, as also all are agreed that we should live soberly. But the reformer fails to see that if we curtail taxation to its lowest possible minimum, reduce it if you will 90 per cent., not one farthing of it would be saved to the workers. The Iron Law would still be in force which says, “ So much as will keep life in you and no more shall go to you, O ye workers, so long as the profit making system remains.” These economic questions cannot be understood in a sufficiently clear manner by the mass of the workers while they are absorbed twelve, fourteen, sixteen, and even more hours a day while in work, and when out of work are walking about with the pangs of hunger eating out their vitals, and the blackness of despair staring them in the face at every turn. Now suppose those of us who can see these things in something like their grim reality, decide that come what may, we at least will do our part towards obtaining remunerative employment for all, and at the same time sufficient leisure that all may have a little breathing time after their work, what course can we take ? To this I reply, there is one way by which it can be done, viz., by at once concentrating our efforts towards the establishing of an eight hours working day. Let us examine a few figures in order to see clearly how this would affect us. We have something like 7,000,000 adult workers in the British Isles, working �7 nominally under the nine hours system, leaving overtime out of consideration for the moment. Let us see how many more hands would be put in employment if we struck off one hour per day from those in work. It is roughly estimated that of the above mentioned workers there are about 900,000 now out of work, representing a total population of 3I or 4 millions of men, women, and children who cannot get the barest necessaries of life. Now strike off one hour per day from the 6,000,000 in work. The result would be an immediate demand for 750,000 additional workers to keep up production at its present rate, and remembering that these 750,000 would immediately begin to buy more food, clothing, and general comforts, this of course would give an im­ petus to trade, and so add greatly to the comfort of the entire community for a year or two. These advan­ tages, however, would soon be swallowed up by fresh displacements of labour due to more efficient machinery and advancing scientific knowledge; but, during the year or two that it gave relief, see how immensely it would add to the leisure and therefore to the general intelligence of the workers. And increased intelligence means more active discontent with our conditions of life, and in due course a hastening of the overthrow of the present capitalistic domination. I am fully aware that there are some who claim to have a knowledge of the workers who contend that the very success of an Eight Hours Movement would simply mean a perpetuation of the present wretched system, as the people would become more contented if the conditions of life were made more tolerable. This I hold to be the very reverse of truth. As a workman who has worked from early boyhood on the farm, down the mine, and in the engineer’s shop, I repudiate such a slanderous statement. What means the continually increasing restlessness of late years of those workmen who are now, relatively to their former position, in a passable state of comfort ? I contend that it is in large part due to the additional leisure obtained under the nine hours system, though most of its advantages have now been swallowed up by more rapid machinery �and the cursed system of overtime we still tolerate. I ask myself what has been my guide in the formation of my opinions on social and political subjects, and, risking being charged with egotism, I reply that I have ever endeavoured to get correct views upon these and other subjects by fashioning my ideas upon the best models I could find, and the more leisure I had the better my opportunity for finding good models. I can understand a middle-class man holding this—to me— absurd theory. I can also understand some workmen reflecting the opinions of these theory-loving, poverty­ accentuating blockheads merely because they are middle-class. But I cannot understand a workman who through youth and early manhood has been battling against long hours in order that he might attend the institute, listen to the lectures, and read the works of able men, and by these means has succeeded in having a mind worth owning—I say I cannot under­ stand such an one hindering rather than helping in a shorter hours movement. He practically says by such conduct that the leisure he used so well as to become a man thereby, others will use so ill that they will con­ tinue fools. But men generally love what is best for all, and are prepared to do their part towards carrying it out so soon as they understand clearly what course they should take. Let those of us who see (or think we see) further than the average man, do all in our power towards enabling him to see as clearly as we do, and then, unless I am incapable of reading aright the lesson of life, he too will become in his turn an earnest and an energetic worker for the elevation of his class. I must apologise to some readers who may think that none of this reasoning is necessary. I emphasize it because I know there exist philosophers who strain at gnats and swallow camels, who talk of ameliorating human suffering, but hang back instead of assisting a movement the success of which must for a dead certainty largely ameliorate the pangs of the hungry men, women, and children who are now in the throes of despair. Another section raise the objection that however desirable it may be to curtail the hours of labour, �remembering the severe competition of other countries it is simply impossible either to raise wages or shorten hours unless a similar movement takes place on the Continent. I will endeavour to answer this first by showing that the English workers produce more per man than any of the Continental Nations, and second, by showing that with regard to our staple industries Foreign Competition is a bogie used by the Employer to frighten the workers into accepting harder terms in order that their master may make a greater profit. It may be of some service to point out the relative wealth per annum produced by the useful workers of this and other countries. I am assuming that the reader is clear concerning the source of wealth, that there is no other source than useful Labour, so that, having sufficient Raw Material for Workers to exercise their ingenuity upon, it will be seen that the more workers, the more the aggregate wealth, as in all ages men have been able to produce by their labour more than they and their families required for ordinary consumption. Quoting from Mulhall’s “Statistics,” we find that Britain with a Population of 36 millions produces wealth to the amount of £1,247,000,000 per annum ; France with 37I millions of people produces annually ^”965,000,000 (or with a million and a half more people about three-quarters the amount the English make; Germany, population 45 millions, wealth per annum, ^850,000,000 ; (or two thirds only of our amount); Russia with 80 millions of people, creates per annum only ^760,000,000, Austria, 38 millions population, only ^602,000,000 per annum ; and simarlarly with the smaller nations. These figures will serve to show that our method of producing wealth is a more effective one than that in vogue on the Con­ tinent, as although they generally work longer hours per day than the English yet the result of their year’s work compares unfavourably with ours. The important lesson to be learnt here is this, that it is not the amount paid as wages that decides whether or not one country can compete successfully with another ; or rather, it is not the countries where wages are low that compete most successfully with this country. This will be seen �IO when it is realised that the severest competitor we have to-day is America, a country that pays at least 25 per cent higher wages than are paid in this country. This of itself should be sufficient to encourage those timorous mortals who are always attributing our ex­ hausting toil to the competition of the lung hours of the Continent. The time may arrive when, with an equally advanced method of production, low paid labour will produce wealth as effectively as better paid labour, but that time has not yet come. By way of proving this let me here instance the Iron Shipbuilding industry. Many have been the disputes between employers and employed in this industry during the past two or three years, the employers continually urging that the Con­ tinental shipbuilders are getting all the trade, or at any rate will do so, unless our workmen submit to reductions in wages and longer hours. This argument was ad­ vanced repeatedly during the year 1885, so in order to thoroughly test the matter a delegation of workers was despatched to the Continent to bring back precise in­ formation upon the subject. They found that Germany was our chief competitor in Iron Shipbuilding, and that during the year 1885 that country produced 22,326 tons of shipping. But in this country one firm on the Clyde during the same period turned out 40,000 tons. France produced 10,000 tons, and Russia 7,867 tons— total for the two countries 17,867 tons. But the river Tyne alone launched no less than 102,998 tons. The Belgium output was 5,312 tons, that of Holland 2,651 tons, of Denmark 3,515 tons. To sum up, the whole of the Continental output was a little over 50,000 tons, while that of the English shipyards was 540,282 tons, or nearly eleven times as great as that of all the yards on the Continent put together. With facts like these before us is it not high time we demanded that our hours were curtailed so as to give a chance to those who now walk about in enforced idleness, without waiting for the Continent to take simultaneous action. The Americans, who pay their mechanics better wages, have had to concede the demands of their workmen for the eight hour working day—not universally, it is true, �II because a universal demand was not made. Just astheir success stimulates us, so our success will stimulate the Continental workers, and we shall find that they are as well prepared as we are to deal vigorously with the exploiting classes. To Trade Unionists I desire to make a special appeal. How long, how long will you be content with the present half-hearted policy of your Unions? I readily grant that good work has been done in the past by the Unions, but, in Heaven’s name, what good purpose are they serving now ? All of them have large numbers out of employment even when their particular trade is busy. None of the important Societies have any policy other than that of endeavouring to keep wages from falling. The true Unionist policy of aggression seems entirely lost sight of; in fact the Unionist of to-day should be of all men the last to be hope­ lessly apathetic, or supporting a policy that plays directly into the hands of the capitalist exploiter. Do not think I am a non-Unionist myself, and therefore denounce Unionists. T take my share of the work in the Trade Union to which I belong, but I candidly confess that unless it shows more vigour in the future than it is showing at the present time (June, 1886) I shall be compelled to take the view—against my will —that to continue to spend time over the ordinary squabble-investigating, do-nothing policy will be an unjustifiable waste of one’s energies. I am quite sure there are thousands of others in my state of mind—e.g., all those who concurred with T. R. Threlfall, the pre­ sident of the Trades Union Congress, when, in his Presidential Address, he told the delegates assembled at Southport that a critical time had arrived in the history of Trades Unions, and that in the future they must lead or follow, and that they could not hope to re­ tain advanced men with their present policy. In his magnificent address Mr. Threlfall did all a man could do to stir the Unionists up to take action in regard to the Eight Hour working day, but one looks in vain at each and all of our important Trade Societies to find any action being taken in the matter. It is not enough �12 to say their funds are low. Their funds are not too low to get up an agitation upon this subject. All over the country they have excellent organisations which might be used in the first place as the means for instruct­ ing their own members up to the required standard, and then spreading information amongst the non-Unionists, skilled and unskilled alike. When the bulk of these understood the pros and cons of the case the combined forces could make a demand for the immediate passing of an Eight Hours Bill, the details of which could be settled by a duly qualified committee. While this is being done attention should also be made to another important item alluded to by Mr. Threlfall viz., the payment of election expenses out of the local or Imperial rates and the support of Members of Parliament in a similar manner. When this is done we shall be able to command the services of those whom we believe in because of their merits, irrespective of what the depth of their pocket may be. Let me now invite attention to the effects of an Eight Hour Bill upon some of our monopolies. Let us take the Railways as a representative concern, using round figures such as will convey a correct idea to the ordinary reader without confusing him. The Blue Books bear out the following statements •>—At the present time the Annual Income of the British Railways may be put at ^70,000,000, of this vast sum one half goes to the Shareholders, who do no useful work whatever; one fourth to keep up rolling stock, permanent way &c.; and the remaining fourth to the workers, (including managers’ and superintendents’ salaries). The man who has not paid attention to Railway Income and Expenditure will denounce this as trash or probably by a stronger term. He will probably say that the figures must be wrong, as Railway Shareholders get only some 5 per cent on their capital. Exactly, but where nearly all make the mistake is in not making the distinction between percentage on money invested and percentage of Income. There are nominally more than ^920,000,000 invested in Railways in the British Isles, and 5 per cent on this means about five-eighths of the �total income, the entire income of 70 millions amounting only to 8 per cent on the investments. Consequently a Railway Company paying 4^ per cent to Shareholders actually pays more than half of the total income to these utterly useless individuals, leaving the remainder to go in about equal proportions to rolling stock and permanent way and as wages and salaries to Employees. This gives about 18s. per week to the 350,000 persons engaged on Railways in the British Isles. When we remember that superintendents and managers get very large salaries, we see that those who do the hard work and have the longest hours get much less than 18s. Now that we realise the enormous amount the idle shareholders take, let us see how generously they behave to those in their employ. At Nine Elms are situated the cleaning sheds of the South Western Railway. Until recently the “dirty cleaners” at this yard received £i os. 6d. per week. Instructions have been issued from Waterloo to curtail their wages from 20s. 6d. to 15s. at one stroke. On the same line, at Waterloo terminus, the parcels porters commence work at 5.20 in the morning and keep on till 9.45 in the evening with one Sunday off per fortnight, their wages being from 18s. to 22s. per week. Now assuming the average day on Railways to be 12 hours, what loss would it inflict on the Shareholders if a Bill were passed enforcing an Eight Hours’ Working Day ? We have seen that the Employees get about a quarter of the total income or about ^"17,000,000. To curtail the hours by one third means of course putting one half more men in work than are at present employed. To pay these at a similar rate to those already working would require £8,500,000 or less than one per cent on the nominal value of the shares, so that a Company paying 4^- per cent now, would, if one half more men were employed still pay 3^ per cent to the Fleecing Shareholders. What arrant nonsense then it is to urge that the Company cannot afford to curtail hours. Let us look now at the condition of our Colliers. Here we have men devoting themselves to underground toil from boyhood to old age, the majority never having �14 the opportunity of paying a visit to the Capital or any •other large town, practically kennelled in the earth, tied down with capitalistic chains, Spending a Sunless life in the unwholesome mines, for the wretched pittance of about 18s. per week. Surely an Eight Hours Bill requires no urging from me on behalf of those who work in and about the mines ; when we remember that of the value of coal raised •annually in this country (about £66,000,000) one third •only goes to the colliers who raise it. An item worth mentioning also was pointed out by Sir Lyon Playfair in his address before the British Association at Aberdeen in 1885, whilst deploring the fact that the exhaustion of the British coalfields made the coal increasingly difficult to get. It was proved that not only has man’s ingenuity conquered these obstacles, but owing to the increased power of steam •engines and hand-labour-saving appliances, two men now produce as much as three men did twenty years -ago. Yet coal is dearer now than it was then ! Thirty years ago eight sailors were required for the management of every 100 tons of shipping. Now, ow­ ing to improved machinery, less than half that number suffice. In twenty years the consumption of fuel on our ocean-going steamers has been reduced by one half, chiefly owing to the use of compound engines in place •of single ones as formerly. Thus on every hand a greater result is being shown with less labour. And it must be so or else there is no meaning in material pro­ gress. But “ less labour ” means under our existing system, and must mean so as long as industry is con­ trolled by the idle classes, not “ more leisure ” or shorter hours all round, but less wages, more unemployed, poverty, famine, and physical and moral degradation. What then can be more rational than to ease the burden of those in work and the starving stomachs of those who are out, by shortening the working day ? See what is going on in the watch-making industry, a fine example of the effects of machinery. Among the exhibits at last year’s Inventions Exhibition was that of the Waltham Watch Co. Some machines were there �T5 at work making screws for watches, of which it took 250,000 to make up a pound in weight. These machines were so perfectly made, that at the Company’s Factory in Massachusetts, one boy keeps seven of them going. The best wire to make one pound weight of screws costs ten shillings, but after this wire has been converted into screws by passing through this automatic machine, the screws are worth /’350, or seven hundred times the cost of the material. Imagine the number of men here thrown out of employment; the watches in large part being made by girls, and the enormous profits going to the owners of the machinery. Take another case, that of Bryant and May’s Match Factory in East London. Two years ago this firm was formed into a Limited Liability Company. Their work girls are most miserably paid, getting only some 8s. per week, and the Company refused to increase their pay when they made a demand a short time since. And yet that Company, during the first six months of its existence, after paying all working expenses, actually paid over ^33,000 to shareholders, who had not done a single stroke of work towards producing it. These girls are working ordinary factory hours, io^- per day They cannot live in comfort on such a miserable pittance as they are receiving. How many girls are compelled by this sort of thing, to take to the streets ? The above is only typical of what all our large firms are doing. Armstrong, Mitchell and Co., the great engineering firm at Newcastle-on-Tyne, for instance, last year after deducting for working expenses and depreciation of stock, paid to shareholders ^162,000. Whatever improvement may come through more efficient machinery etc., its effect, while owned by, and used for the profit of, the employing class, will be to throw men out of work and swell the already too full pockets of the capitalists. If we do not decide to cur­ tail the hours of labour, what then can we do ? Allow things to go from bad to worse ? That is what most assuredly will happen, unless we absorb the Unemployed into the ranks of the employed by rigidly suppressing overtime, and curtailing the nominal nine hours per day to something less. �i6 The question will be asked by some, “ What about wages if we work an hour a day less, are we to have an hour s less pay ? ” Most certainly not. Even when the curtailing principle was only partially applied 15 years ago by the Trade Unionists this did not happen. On the contrary in many instances the workmen were soon able to get a rise in actual wages in addition to the curtail­ ing of hours. The reason we cannot command a better wage now is because the Employer can say, “ If you don’t like it you may go, others will be glad to take your place,” but, as I think I have shown, if we make Eight Hours the labour day then the Unemployed will be absorbed and the workers will be able in their turn to dictate terms to the Employer. In conclusion I appeal to the workers of Great Britain to join hands over this business and let us make it a success. In a measure of this kind Liberal and Tory, Christian and Freethinker, Unionist and Non-Unionist, Mechanic and Labourer, Radical and Social-Democrat, Teetotaller or Vegetarian, whatsoever be your creed or sex, unite on common ground and let us fight this battle of the workers with vigour, with energy and determination. Be no longer apathetic. Take pleasure in the performance of your duty as an honest citizen and the result will be a hastening of that glorious time when the domination of a class shall be a matter of History, and when all shall have enough work and none shall have too much. For further information on all these subjects read “JUSTICE ” every Saturday, One Penny, which is owned by working men, edited by a working man, and independent of capitalist support. Also, if willing to assist in attaining these objects, write to H. W. Lee, Bridge House, Blackfriars, E.C. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. 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Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1886?] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T396 Subject The topic of the resource Working conditions Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (What a compulsory 8 hour working day means to the workers), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Social conditions Socialism Working Classes Working Conditions https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/26c3a0ff335a7a6d86d7dc6d26eb6ed7.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=O4sw6x9KUx7y5O1KDk3jl8yVut8IMrIv1Xma%7EFHWG8oqadDY9d6ptZEQnQVAlPLQ3LlShuOK6O2Wqjn86tM3gL6r4wZlgAb0k1avWoH5KcOSnVhCgL2s22wTWrAmGMNzp6NyPMjfyTA1TSLfUw64Fvdb31MrAXS516t6KTPpWH6Wv8q3wYzOtfLgn-Y3jRDJK2L1-ARFsTGVNYNlPFh9-5N8yPbzxklYIkS4P6xbKqfEardQOQ51dJNExDFdppOyj9b7a-3Jw2IcweiCFu8tzZLtdpNG4iwVsekS-a%7E5C-G39lbvaWHE%7E4vl9iaHiSFU7QM1KSRZl3FzTvmh72d69w__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 215345c72fbedc717b7e332bf2b73b77 PDF Text Text Price One Penny. 23rd Thousand. II Reprinted with additions from “JUSTICE,” BY J. L. JOYNES. 1885. Published at The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C. I.—DIVISION OF TOIL. Q. Why is it necessary that any work should be done in the world ? A. Because men require food, clothing, and shelter; and these cannot be obtained without work. Q. Is the work which must be done in order to produce these necessaries either very hard or very long ? A. It is neither the one nor the other. After all the necessary work has been done, there is ample opportunity for the enjoyment of leisure and the produc­ tion of beautiful things. Q. Then why do immense numbers of men spend their whole lives in doing work which gives them no pleasure, while the enjoyment of leisure is an impossibility for them ? A. Because there is smother large class of men who keep all the available leisure and pleasure for themselves. Q. How may these two sets of persons be roughly distinguished? A. As employers and employed; idlers and workers ; privileged and plundered ; or, more simply still, asrich and poor. Q. Cannot the poor provide the rich witn rood, clothing, and shelter, and yet have enough time for leisure even after they have done this ? A. Certainly; but the rich are not content with exacting simple necesswies from the poor. Q, What more do they compel them to contribute ? A. Luxuries; and there is no end to the amount of labour which ma« be wasted in the painful production of useless things. Q. Why do the poor consent to produce by their labour all these necessary and un­ necessary things for persons who d» nothing for them in return ? A. Simply because they cannot help themselves. Q. But how does it happen that <ney are in this helpless position ? A. It is due to the fact that society is at present organised solely in the interests of the rich. Q. Why cannot the poor organise society on a system which will prevent their being robbed of their own productions’ A Because the existing organisation itself keeps them ignorant of its own causes, and «xmsequently powerless to resist its effects, Q. What is the first step towards a better state of things ? A. The education of the poor to understand how it is that their own excessive work enables the rich to live in idleness upon its fruits. Q. What is the most hopeful sign that they are ready for enlightenment on this point ? A. Discontent with the disagreeable and degrading conditions of their own lives. Q. What is the first principle to which they may appeal for relief from these condi­ tions? A. The principle of justice, since it is manifestly unfair that those who do all the work should obtain the smallest share of the good things which it produces. Q. What is the alternative to the present unequal distribution of work and good things? A. That all should be obliged to do their fair share of the work, and to content themselves with a fair share of the good things. Q. Are those who insist upon the practical enforcement of this principle Conservatives or Radicals ? A. They are neither, since they are necessarily opposed to all political parties. Q. What then are they called ? A. From the fact that they wish to displace the pre­ sent system of competition for the bare means of subsistence, where each man is for himself, and to establish in its stead the principle of associated work and common enjoy ment, where each is for all and all for each, they are called Socialists �'•'AxW^v.xW IL—THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM. • Q, What is wealth ? A. Everything that supplies the wants of man, and ministers in any way to his comfort and enjoyment. Q, Whence is wealth derived? A. From labour usefully employed upon natural objects. Q. Give instances of labour usefully employed? A. Ploughing, sowing, spinning weaving, etc., etc. Q. Give instances of useless employment of labour? A. Digging a pit for the pur­ pose of filling it up again, making a road that leads nowhere, supporting people in abso­ lute idleness by presenting them with food and clothing for doing nothing, etc., etc. Q. What do we mean when we say that an article has value ? A. That it is useful or agreeable to human beings. Q. When is an article said to have an “ exchange value” in addition to its usefulness or “ use value ” ? A. When it embodies a certain amount of generally useful labour. Q. Are the two sorts of value ever identical ? A. They cannot be compared at all. Q. Explain by an instance what you mean by this? A. The hunger of a starving man who enters a baker’s shop does not affect the exchange-value of a loaf, which is measured by the amount of labour which has been expended in making and baking it. Q. What is its use-value to him ? J. Its use-value is infinitely great, as it is a ques­ tion of life and death with him to obtain it. Q. What is its use-value to another man? A. Its use-value is nothing at all to a turtle-fed aiderman, sick already with excessive eating, but its exchange-value remains the same in all cases. Q. Is there no exception to this rule? A. If the baker has a monopoly of baking, and no other loaves are anywhere obtainable, he can charge a much higher price than the amount of his expended labour entitles him to demand. Q. Is this often done ? A. Every monopolist does it, as a matter of course. Q. Who are the chief monopolists ? A. There are two great classes. The landlord s monopolise the land, and the capitalists the machinery. Q. What is capital ? A. Capital is the result of past labour devoted to present pro­ duction,—machinery and factories for example. Q. How does the landlord secure his profit ? A. By extorting from the labourer a share of all that he produces, under threat of excluding him from the land. Q. How does the capitalist act? A. He extorts from those labourers who are ex­ cluded from the land a share of all that they produce, under threat of withholding from them the implements of production, and thus refusing to let them work at all. Q. On what terms does the capitalist allow the labourers to work ? A. The capitalist agrees to return to them as wages about a quarter of what they have produced by their work, keeping the remaining three quarters for himself and his class. Q. What is this system called ? A. The capitalist system. Q. What is it that regulates the amount returned to the labourer ? A. The amount that is necessary to keep him and his family alive. Q. Why does the capitalist care to keep him alive ? A. Because capital without labour is helpless. Q. How is this amount settled ? A. By competition among the labourers, and the higgling of the labour market. Q. Is it invariable? A. It varies with all the variations of trade and locality, and the different degrees of skill of the different labourers, but it constantly tends to a bare subsistence for the mass of the labourers. Q. By what name is this law known ? A. The iron law of wages. Q. How can it be proved ? A. By reckoning up the amount of food and clothing consumed by those who produce them. Q Is there any independent testimony to its truth ? A. The witness of all doctors who have studied the subject. Q. What evidence do they give upon it ? A. They declare that diseases arising from insufficient nourishment are constantly present throughout the labouring classes, and that “ the poor are permanently afflicted with one disease—starvation." Q. What remedy for this do Socialists propose ? A. Simply that the labouring classes should become their own employers. Q. What effect would this have? A. The classes who live in idleness on the fruits of the labour of other people would be improved off the face of the earth, every one being obliged to take his share of honest work. Q. On what compulsion ? A. The alternative of starvation would stare them in the �face, as soon as the labourers ceased to supply them gratis with food, clothing, shelter, and luxuries. Q. Are not the “upper classes” useful as organisers of labour? A. Those who organise labour are always worthy of their hire, though the hire may be fixed too high at present; but it is only the absolutely idle, and those whose work, however hard it may be, consists in perfecting and organising the arrangements for plundering the labourers of their reward, who are simply the enemies of the workers. Q. Are shareholders in companies, for instance, useful in organising labour ? A. As a rule they employ others to organise labour, and the work done by the company would go on just as well if the shareholders disappeared. Ill—SURPLUS VALUE. Q. In whose interest is present production carried on? A. In that of the employing classes. Q. Explain this. A. The labourers produce the machinery, which the employers take away from them as soon as it is made. The labourers are then employed to work it, in order to produce profit for their masters at a faster rate. Q. What interest have the labourers in the continuance of capitalism, that is, the capitalist system ? A. Manifestly none. Q. Is capital, therefore, useless? A. Certainly not. The way in which it is used i» attacked by Socialists, not the thing itself. Q. How is it possible that it should be used in the labourer’s interest? A. Only by means of a democratic State, acting in the interest of the producers. Q. In what way would the State effect this? A. By taking into its own hands all the land and capital, or “ means of production,” which are now used as monopolies for the benefit of the possessing class. Q. Is there any precedent for this? A. As the State has already taken over the Post Office and the Telegraphs, so it might take over the Railways, Shipping, Mines, Factories, and all other industries. Q. Is the Post Office worked on Socialist principles ? A. Certainly not. There is no pretence that the interests of its labourers, the postmen, are considered at all. Q. What principle regulates their employment? A. That which regulates the em­ ployment of all other labourers, competition, reducing their wages to the lowest possible point, except in the case of the higher officials, who are paid much more than would willingly be accepted by equally capable men, Q. Cannot the workers combine together by co-operation to defeat this principle of competition ? A. Co-operative societies cannot defeat this principle, unless the whole body of workers are included in one society, and that is simply Socialism Q. Why cannot different societies defeat competition? A. Because they are com­ pelled to compete against each other, to exploit those labourers who are not members of their body, and to be exploited by others in their turn. Q. What do you mean by the word “ exploit " ? A. To exploit is to get more than one gives in a bargain. Q. To what extent is the exploitation of the labourers commonly carried? A. The employers give them a bare subsistence, and take from them all the rest of the fruits of their labour. Q. What is the difference between the two called ? A. Surplus-value. Q. What proportion expresses its amount ? A. The proportion between the two or three hours of necessary labour, and the ordinary ten, twelve, or more hours’ work. Q. W’hat do you mean by necessary labour? A. That which would feed and clothe and keep in comfort the nation if all took their part in performing it. Q. Is any individual employer responsible for the exploitation of the labourers? A. No, the blame applies to the whole class. Individual employers may be ruined, but the employing class continue to appropriate the surplus-value. Q. How do you account for this ? A. Because competition is as keen among the capitalists as among the labourers. Q. How does it act with them ? A. It determines the division of the spoil, different sets of people struggling to get a share in the surplus-value. Q. How does this competition above affect the labourers below ? A. It does not affect them at all. It is assumed that the plunder is to be shared among the “ upper classes,’ and the only question is in what proportion this shall be done. Q. How do. the upper classes label this plunder? A. By many names, such as rent �4 brokerage, fees, profits, wages of superintendence, reward of abstinence, insurance against risk, but above all, interest on capital. Q. Are all these deducted from the labourers’ earnings ? A. There is no other fund from which they could possibly come. Q. Is surplus-value paid for at all ? A. By no means. It is the produce of unpaid labour, and is simply taken for nothing, just as a thief accumulates his stolen goods, Q. Does not the progress of civilisation decrease the amount of the surplus-value ? A. On the contrary it largely increases it. Q. How is this? A. Improvements in agriculture, method, and machinery, which civilisation renders possible, multiply manifold the productiveness of the labourer’s toil; but competition among the labourers prevents them from reaping the benefit. Q. Does not competition among capitalists in the same way lower the rate of interest ? A. Certainly it does, but the rate of interest has nothing whatever to do with the rate of exploitation or of surplus-value. Q. What is interest ? A. Interest is a fine, paid by the private organiser of labour out of the surplus-value which his labourers supply, to the idle person from whom he borrows his capital. Q. What is the tendency of the two rates of interest and surplus-value ? A. The rate of interest falls, while the rate of surplus value rises. Q. Why is this ? A. Because with the storing up of the increased surplus-value by the capitalist, or in other words, with the accumulation of capital, the competition among capitalists who are anxious to lend on interest becomes keener, and each individual is obliged to be content with less. Q. Does not this lessening of the rate of interest benefit the labourer ? A. No; since it is only due to the multiplication of those who share in his surplus-value, the result being the same as it would be if he were allowed to pay a penny to six people instead of sixpence to one. Q. How do the capitalists adjust their own conflicting claims ? A. It is a question of division of spoil among plunderers. If the surplus-value is high, there is more to divide among the capitalists, but if the capitalists are numerous there is so much less for each individual among them. Q. Explain this by an example A. Take the case of Belgium. The labourers are there exploited to the uttermost, there being no "factory laws” to restrain the greed of the employer, but since capital is plentiful, the surplus-value is shared among many capitalists, and the rate of interest is low. IV.—METHODS OF EXTORTION. Q. What did you mean by saying that capital without labour is helpless ?. A. The most ingenious machinery can do nothing but rust or rot unless it is kept going by labourers. Q. Why do not the labourers decline to work the machinery for the capitalist? A. Because they have no other means of making their livelihood. Q. How could this be remedied ? The State could compete with the capitalist by providing employment for the labourers, and paying them the full value of their pro­ ductions. Q. What would be the effect of this upon the private capitalist ? A. His power would be gone at once, since no labourers would work for him, except on such terms as would leave him no surplus-value whatever. Q. Is not the existence of capital in private hands an evil? A. Yes, certainly; but capital, as such, would cease to exist. Q. Is not wealth in private hands an evil ? A. Large accumulations of wealth by individuals are an evil, but the evil is different in kind, for they could no longer be used to carry out the capitalist system. Q. Why not? A. Because the capitalist system presupposes the existence of two factors, and is unworkable and impossible without them. Q. What are these two factors ? A. First, private property in accumulated wealth ; and, secondly, the presence of property-less labourers in the market who are forced to sell their services at cost price. Q. What do you mean by cost price? A. The wages which will give them a bare subsistence and enable them to work on the morrow, this being the cost of the daily reproduction of the force or power to labour which constitutes their sole property. Q. Could not the capitalists obtain labourers by offering them the full value of their �5 productions ? A. Possibly, but since the only object of the capitalist system is to produce for profit, they would cease to wish to employ them when the source of interest and profit was cut off. Q. But supposing, in spite of their previous principles, they still wished to employ them, what would be the result ? A. The labourers would have nothing to complain of in this case; but the result would be that private capital would gradually dwindle away, since it would not be replaced by surplus-value, and the capitalist could not compete with the State on equal terms. Q | What has hitherto prevented the workers from combining for the overthrow of the capitalist system ? A. Ignorance and disorganisation. Q. What has left them in ignorance ? A. The system itself, by compelling them to spend all their lives upon monotonous toil, and leaving them no time for education Q. What account have they been given of the system which oppresses them ? A. The priest has explained that the perpetual presence of the poor is necessitated by a law of God ; the economist has proved its necessity by a law of Nature; and between them they have succeeded in convincing the labourers of the hopelessness of any opposition to the capitalist system. Q. How is it that the labourers cannot see for themselves that they are legally robbed ? A. Because the present method of extracting their surplus value is one of fraud rather than of force, and has grown up gradually. Q. Has this not always been the case? A. Certainly not. Under the slave-owning system there was no fraud involved, but only force. Q. What similarity is there between the slave-owning and the capitalist system ? A. The parallel is complete, with the single exception that force was used in place of fraud. Q. Explain this. A. The slave-owner received the produce of the slave’s toil, and re­ turned to him part of it in the shape of food, clothing, and shelter. The capitalist takes the whole produce of the labourer’s toil, and returns to him such proportion of it as will provide him with necessaries. Q. What constitutes the chief difference between capitalism and slave-owning? A. The fact that the capitalist goes through the form of bargaining with the labourer as ic the amount of the portion of the produce that shall be returned to him. Q. What is this farce called ? A. Freedom of contract. Q. In what sense is it free? A. In this sense—that the labourer is free to take what is offered or nothing. Q. Has he anything to fall back upon? A. He has absolutely nothing in countries where the tyranny of capitalism is untempered by any form of Socialism. Q. What is the case in England? A. Humanity has revolted against the reign of the capitalist, and provided the workhouse as a last resource for the labourer, taxing the capitalist for its support. Q. How has the capitalist turned this piece of Socialism to his own ends? A. By rendering the workhouse so unpleasant to the poor that starvation is often thought pre­ ferable ; and by insisting that no useful work done in the workhouse shall be brought into his market, where its presence would disturb his calculations, and impair his profits. Q. Why does he allow it to exist at all ? A. Because he knows that its existence may stave off for a time the Revolution which he dreads. Q. What do you mean by the Revolution ? A. The complete change in the conditions of society which will abolish all unjust privileges, distinctions of rank, or difference between wage-payers and wage-earners, and will render the workers their own employers. Q. What other method of appropriating surplus-value has prevailed besides those of slavery and capitalism ? A. In purely agricultural countries, as for instance in Ireland and South-Eastern Europe, different types of landlordism have been quite as effectual. Q. Does landlordism represent the forcible or the fraudulent method? A. Force is its chief element, since it labels the surplus-value ‘ rents,' and uses all the resources of civilisation in the shape of police and soldiery to enforce their payment by the people, but the element of fraud is present, since the labourer is told that he is free to give up his holding if he does not wish to pay rent. Q. Mention a special type of landlordism ? A. The system called corvee. Q. How does this work? A. The labourer is allowed to work on his own land for a certain number of days, and to keep for himself all the produce of his toil during that time, on the condition that he spends all his remaining time upon the land which belongs to the landlord, who appropriates its fruits. Q. How does this differ from the capitalist method of appropriation ? A. Chiefly in the fact that the labourer knows exactly when he is working for his own benefit, and whe t for that of the landlord ; while under the capitalist system there it no line of distinction and neither he nor anyone else can tell precisely the exact length of time during whic.i he gives away his labour gratis, although it is clear that his first two or three hours are for himself, and the remaining seven or eight for some one else. �— 0 — Q. Can you show this to be the case ? A. As the producers only get from one-fourth to one-third of the total produce, the remainder of their work obviously goes to benefit the non-producers. V—MACHINES AND THEIR USE. Q. What is the use of machinery ? A. Labour-saving machinery is used, as its name indicates, to reduce the cost of production. Q. What do you mean by the cost of production ? A. The amount of human labour necessary to produce useful things. Q. How ought this reduction of the necessary hours of labour to affect the labouring class ? A. It ought to benefit them in every way, by increasing their wealth as well as their opportunities of leisure. Q. Has it done so ? A. Certainly not. Q. Why not ? A. Because the capitalist class has appropriated to itself nearly all the benefit. Q. What, then, has been the result ? A. The available surplus-value has largely increased, and the idle classes have become more numerous and more idle. Q. Support your opinion by that of an economist? A. “It is questionable,” says John Stuart Mill, " if all the improvements in machinery have lightened the day’s toil of a single man.” Q. In what aspect of the case is this correct ? A. In respect of the whole labouring class as a body. Q. What is the effect upon individuals of the introduction of a labour-saving machine ?' A. It lightens the day’s toil to a certain number of labourers most effectually, by taking away their employment altogether, and throwing them helpless on the streets. Q. Is such a lamentable event frequent ? A. It is a matter of every-day occurrence. Q. What is the result to their employer ? A. He “ saves their labour ” in the senseof getting the same work done by the machine without having to pay their wages. Q. Is this a permanent advantage to him individually ? A. As long as he has a mono­ poly of the machine, it is a great advantage to him, but other capitalists soon introduce it also, and compel him to share the spoil with them. Q. In what way is this result obtained ? A. By comp dtion. The owners of the machines try to undersell each other, with a view to keeizug the production in their own hands. Q. How far does competition beat down prices? A. Until the normal level of capitalist profits is reached, below which they all decline to go. Q. What inference do the economists draw from the result of competition? A. That the whole nation shares equally in the advantage of the machine, since prices are every­ where reduced. Q. What fallacy underlies this argument ? A. The same fallacy which vitiates every argument of the economists, and that is the assumption that the labourers have no right to complain so long as the employers are content with taking only the normal rate of profits as their share of the surplus-value. Q. What other consideration is omitted by the economists ? A. The fact that society is divided into two classes of idlers and workers. They assume again that the workers have no right to complain, so long as they seem to obtain an equal share with the idlers in the advantage gained by the saving of their own toil. Q. How do they seem to share this advantage ? A. By the reduction in cost of articles which they buy. Q. Is not cheapness of production a benefit to the workers ? A. It is only an apparent, not a real benefit. Q. How could it be rendered real? A. It would be real if all who consumed were also workers. As it is, the working-class get all the disadvantage of the low wages, and of the adulteration, which has been described as a form of competition. Q. What makes the reduction of cost appear advantageous to the wage-earners ? A. The fact that their wages are paid in money. Q. How is this ? A. The money-price of all articles has risen enormously during the last three centuries owing to the increased abundance of gold. The money wages have risen also, but not in anything like the same proportion. Q. What has prevented them from rising in the same proportion ? A. The cheapening of the labour-cost of the necessaries of life, which has thus been rendered an empty boon to the wage-earners. �7 Q. Give an instance of the misapirehension of these facts* A. The regular boast of the Free-Traders, recently reiterated by John Bright, is that the Liberals have given the labourers two loaves whereas the Tories wished them to be content with only one. Q. What is this boast based upon ? A. The undeniable fact that bread is cheaper in England under Free Trade than under Protection. Q, Then how can you tell that the labourer does not get twice as much bread as he would otherwise enjoy ? A. Simply because it has been proved again and again on the highest authority that the labourers as a body at present obtain so bare a subsistence that it does not suffice to keep them in health; therefore they could not at any time have lived on half the amount. Q. What would be the effect if bread became twice as dear ? A. Wages would neces­ sarily rise. A Wiltshire farm labourer could not maintain his family on half their pre­ sent food; and though capital cares nothing about individuals, it takes good care that the labourers shall not starve in a body. Q. What, then, is the general result of the cheapness which is caused by the introduc­ tion of labour-saving machinery? A. The advantage of the cheapening of luxuries is obviously reaped directly by the idlers, since the workers cannot afford to purchase them. In the case of necessaries the advantage seems at first sight to be shared between idlers and workers; but ultimately the idlers secure the whole advantage, because money-wages are proportioned to what money will buy, and the iron law keeps them down to the price of a bare subsistence. Q. Do the labourers suffer any direct disadvantage from machinery? A. Certainly they do. Numbers of them are thrown out of employment at each fresh invention; their position is rendered ‘precarious in the extreme; and there is a constant tendency to replaced skilled labour by unskilled, and men by women. Q. If this is so, would not the workers be wise to destroy the machinery ? A. To destroy what they have themselves produced, merely because it is at present stolen from them, would be absurd. Q. What course should they pursue ? A. Organise their ranks; demand restitution of their property; keep it under their control; and work it for their own benefit. . 4 VI.—DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. « Q. Is it the case that the prices of articles would be raised if the community were organised on Socialist principles? A. Not necessarily, nor in most cases; but in some this would certainly be the result. Q. On what principle? A. The principle governing the price of all ordinary things would be that the worker should receive the full value of his labour. Q. Would not this always raise the price of his production? A. No, it would only ensure its being paid to him instead of to an idler. Q. Explain this? A. In many cases the full labour-value of an article is paid by the consumer, although the producer gets only his bare subsistence, all the surplus-value being intercepted by the numerous unnecessary middlemen. Q. Why is this not always the case? A. Because the employer of labour, instead of always dividing the surplus-value among middlemen, often competes with his neighbours by offering a share of it to the consumer. Q. How can he do this ? A. Simply by selling his goods below their full labour-value. Q. Give an instance of this? A. A notorious example of this occurs in the match-box trade, for although several middlemen secure their share of the surplus-value of the match-box makers, they are still sold to the public at a lower price than their full labour­ value, the buyer thus becoming a partner in the employer’s theft by receiving a share of his stolen goods. Q. Who are the middlemen who intercept and share the surplus-value produced by the labourer ? A. The unnecessary agents and distributors, the holders of stocks, bonds, and shares of every description, and all those who are supported by the wealth-producers either in idleness or in useless labour, of which latter class of persons flunkeys are a conspicuous example. Q. Do not the rich support their own flunkeys, and maintain in comfort those who produce luxuries for them ? A. Certainly not. These people are maintained entirely by the workers, though the maintenance is passed through the hands of the rich, who therefore imagine that they produce it. Q. Is not expenditure for luxuries “good for trade," and so beneficial to the workers ? A. It is only good for the trade of the producers of luxuries by exactly the amount which it withdraws from the producers of useful things. �.'•WSSf^'vNvi- ,■■ ^. .... ...WTM' — 8 — Q. Would not the money employed upon luxuries otherwise be idle? A. By no means. The rich are not in the habit of keeping their riches in a stocking, and the bankers are compelled to keep all the money lent them in full use, or they would them­ selves be ruined. Q. What then is the result of spending money upon luxuries? A. The destruction of a certain amount of wealth and the absolute waste of the labour spent in repro­ ducing it. Q. Does not the expenditure of a wealthy man in keeping up a large household benefit the poor ? A. Decidedly not. Q. What then is the result of spending money in maintaining flunkeys ? A. The utter waste of all the food and clothing they consume. Q. Would not they in any case consume food and clothing ? A. Certainly : but they would repay the waste by producing useful things themselves. Q. How does all this work affect the labourers ? A. It compels them to produce more food and clothing than would otherwise be necessary, or else to consume less of it themselves. Q. How is this ? A. Because the food which the flunkeys eat cannot be also eaten by the labourers; while the labourers are obliged to produce it, since somebody must do this, and it is perfectly evident that the flunkeys do not. Q. Does not this apply to all the idle classes ? A. Certainly. We have only to ask where the food which they eat and the clothes which they wear, come from, and we see that they are produced by somebody else without any return being made for them by the idlers. That is to say, they represent unpaid labour, or in other words surplus­ value. Q. Then if one man is living in idleness, what is the inevitable result ? A. That another man is producing what he consumes; or that several are each doing more than their fair share of work to make up for his deficiency. Q. How would Socialism deal with this question of work? A. It would compel every one to do his share of the necessary work of the world. Q. Under what penalty ? A. Under penalty of starvation, since those who refused to work would get nothing to eat. Q. What would happen to the old and infirm and the children? A. They would be, as they are in any society, a perfectly just charge upon the able-bodied workers, in­ creasing the necessary work of the world by the amount which must be devoted to their maintenance and education. Q. Would the workers then receive the full value of their toil ? A. Deductions from it for such purposes as those just mentioned are, of course, inevitable, and must be made under every form of society, as well as certain other deductions for other measures of public utility. Q. What deductions can be prevented by Socialism ? A. Nothing could be subtracted from the labourers’ reward for the purpose of maintaining in idleness any persons whatever who are capable of work, nor for the aggrandisement of private individuals, nor for the furthering of objects of no public utility merely to satisfy individual caprice. YII—THEORIES OF PROFIT. Q. What is the use of money ? A. It facilitates the exchange of articles, especially those of unequal value. Q. How is this effected? A. If A produces wheat, and B cloth, money serves as a convenient measure of the labour-value of each. A exchanges his wheat for money, and buys cloth with that. B exchanges his cloth for money and buys wheat with that. Q. Are they both enriched by the bargain ? A. Not in the matter of exchange-value, since wheat which has cost a day’s labour exchanges for cloth which has cost the same, but in the matter of use-value they are both enriched, since each gets what he wants, anil gives what he does not want. Q. Is this always the case? A. Always, in the ordinary exchange between producers who are working for their own benefit, and exchange goods for money, and that money for other goods. Q. Can a profit be made out of money transactions altogether apart from the exchange ©f goods ? A. Yes, by gambling either on the race-course or on the stock-exchange, but in this case one gambler's gain is another’s loss. Q. Whaf other form of exchange now prevails? A. That of those who, not being workers, produce no goods, but yet have command of money. �— 9 ~ Q. How do they use it ? A. They exchange their money for goods, and those goods back again into money. Q. Then what is the use of the process if they only get money at the end, when they had money at the beginning ? A. Because at the second exchange they get more money than they gave at the first. Q. How has this fact been explained by economists? A. By the mere statement that the money-monger either gave less money than the goods were worth at the first exchange, or got more than they were worth at the second. Q. What consideration did they omit in this theory ? A. The fact that these same money-mongers are in the market both as buyers and sellers, and that without a miracle they cannot all gain on both transactions, but must lose in selling precisely the amount they gain in buying. Q. What other inadequate explanation has been put forward ? A. The theory that in buying machinery they buy something which has the power of adding an extra exchange-value to the goods upon which it is employed. Q. What made this theory seem plausible? A. The fact that with a machine the labourer can produce goods much faster than without it. Q. Does not this add exchange-value to his productions? A. Not unless he has a monopoly of the machine, and can thus fear no competition except that of hand-labour; otherwise the ex change-value of his goods sinks in proportion to the increased rapidity of their production. Q. Explain this. A. If he can make two yards of cloth in the time which he formerly devoted to one, and all other weavers can do the same, the price or exchange-value of two yards sinks to the former price of one; though, of course, the use-value of two is always greater than that of one. Q. Are not monopolies frequent ? A. No individual capitalist can keep a monopoly for any great length of time, as all inventions become common property at last, and, although it is true that the capitalists as a body have a monopoly of machinery as against the workers, which adds a fictitious value to machine-made goods, and will continue to do so until the workers take control of the machinery, yet this extra value is too small to account for a tithe of the profits of the money-mongers. Q. What is the one thing needful, which they must be able to buy in the market, in order to make these profits ? A. Something whichjshall itself have the power of creating exchange-value largely in excess of its own cost, in order that at the end of the transac­ tion they may have secured more money than they have expended. Q, What is to be bought in the market having this power ? A. There is only one thing with this power, and that is the labourer himself, who offers his labour-force on the market. Q. On what terms does he offer it ? A. Competition compels him to be content with its cost price. Q. What is this ? A. Subsistence wages, that is, enough to keep himself and his family from starvation. Q. What does this represent in labour? A. The value produced by his labour expendedBsefully for two or three hours every day. Q. Is he, then, at leisure after two or three hours’ work? A. By no means. The bargain between him and the capitalist requires him to give ten hours or more of work for the cost price of two or three. Q. Why does he make such an unequal bargain ? A. Because, in spite of all so-called freedom of contract, he has no other choice. Q. Has the capitalist no conscience? A. Individuals cannot alter the system, even if they would ; and the capitalist is now often represented by a company, which, if it had a conscience, could not pay its five per cent. Q. After the labourer has produced the price of his own wages, what does he go on to do ? A. To produce exchange-value, for which he is not paid at all, for the benefit of the capitalist. Q. What is the value produced by this unpaid labour called? A. Surplus value, as we said before. , Q. What does the capitalist do with the surplus value? A. He keeps as much as he can for himself under the name of profits of his business. Q. Why does he not keep it all ? A. Because out of it he has to pay landlords, other capitalists from whom he has borrowed capital, bankers and brokers who have effected these loans for him, middlemen who sell his wares to the public, and finally the public, in order to induce them to buy from him instead of from rival manufacturers. Q. How does he justify this appropriation of surplus-value by his class ? A. He tries to persuade himself that capital has the power of breeding and producing interest by as natural a process as the reproduction of animals. �----- IO ----- Q. Can he find any dupes to believe in so absurd a theory ? A. He instils a genuine belief into himself and others that this is really the case. Q. What is the inference from this? A. That the labourer ought to be grateful to the capitalist for furnishing him with employment. Q. For what have the labourers really to thank the capitalist? A. For defrauding them of three-quarters of the fruits of their toil, and rendering leisure, education, and natural enjoyment almost impossible for them to attain. H VIII.—INADEQUATE OBJECTIONS. Fi l n Q. What kind of objectors do Socialists mostly meet with ? A. Those who from interested motives prefer the present anarchy to the proposed organisation of labour, and those who consider Socialists as a set of well-meaning persons busied about an impracticable scheme. Q. What objection do they chiefly urge against Socialism? A. That Socialists, if poor, are interested schemers for the overthrow of an excellent society, in order that, being themselves idle and destitute, they may be able to seize upon the wealth accumu­ lated by more industrious people. Q. What have they to say against Socialists of wealth and industry ? A. That they must obviously be insincere in their Socialism, or they would at once give away all their capital, instead of denouncing what they themselves possess. Q. How should Socialist working men meet the charge? A. With contempt. The idea that people who are treated with injustice have no right to demand justice because they would be gainers by its enforcement, is too absurd to require refutation. Q. How should wealthy Socialists reply? A. They should point out that, so long as the capitalist system remains, it is impossible to evade the responsibility of wealth by merely transferring it to other persons. Q. Explain this by an instance ? A. In a capitalist society the mere purchasing of an article in the market involves the exploitation of the labourers who produced it; and this is not in any way remedied or atoned for by giving away the article afterwards to somebody else. Q. How does this illustrate the case ? A. The owner of capital cannot prevent it from exploiting the labourers by giving it away. It cannot be used as Socialism enjoins except under an organised system of Socialism. Q. Can the wealthy Socialist do nothing to frustrate the capitalist system? A. He can mitigate the severity of competition in all his personal relations. Beyond that he can do nothing except use his wealth in helping on the Socialist cause. Q. How may Socialists reply to the taunt that their scheme is impracticable ? A. By quoting the opinion of J. S. Mill that the difficulties of Socialism are greatly over-rated; and they should declare that, so far from being an impracticable Utopian scheme, it is the necessary and inevitable result of the historical evolution of society. Q. How can they prove this ? A, They can point to the fact that production is becom­ ing more and mere socialised every day. Q. Explain this? A. Production, which was once carried on by individuals working separately for themselves, is now organised by companies and joint-stock concerns, by massing large numbers of producers together, and uniting their efforts for a common end. Q. For what end? A. -For the profits of the shareholders of the company. Q. How could the State take advantage of this? A. By taking into its own hands the organisation which the capitalists have prepared for it, and using it for the benefit of the producers alone. Q. Would not the capitalists start fresh companies in opposition to those managed by the State ? A. They could no more compete with the State than they can now with the Post Office; and they would be equally helpless in the case of the Railways and all the great industries. Q. Would it not be easier for the capitalists to compete with the State in the case of smaller concerns ? A. It would in any case be impossible for them to get labourers, since the State would be paying the labourers the full value of their labour, and they would therefore decline to work for the capitalists. Q. Would the expropriated capitalists be entitled to compensation? A. As a matter of principle it is unjust to compensate the holders of stolen goods out of the pockets of those who have suffered the theft; but it might be expedient to grant some compensation in the shape of annuities. Q. What is the tendency of the evolution of society? A. It tends always towards �11 more complex organisation, and to a greater interdependence of all men upon each other; each individual becoming more and more helpless by himself, but more and more power­ ful as part of a mightier society. Q. Is it true that individuality would be crushed by Socialism ? J. On the contrary, it is crushed by the present state of society, and would then alone be fairly developed. Q. What does J. S. Mill say on this point? A “The restraints of Communism would be freedom in comparison with the present condition of the majority of the human race. The generality of labourers in this and most other countries have as little choice of occupation or freedom of locomotion, are practically as dependent on fixed rules and on the will of others, as they could be in any system short of actual slavery.” Q. What does Mr. Fawcett say on the same subject ? A. That there is no choice of work or possibility of change for the factory hand ; and that the boy who is brought up to the plough must remain at the plough-tail to the end of his days. Q. What other objection has been urged against Socialism ? A. That it will take away all the incentives to exertion, and induce universal idleness in consequence. Q. Is this the case? A. On the contrary, it will apply the strongest incentive to all alike, for all must work if they wish to eat, while at present large classes are exempted by the accident of birth from the necessity of working at all. Q. Name another common objection. A. That Socialism will destroy culture and refinement by compelling the leisured classes who have a monopoly of them to do some honest work. Q. Is this the case ? A. On the contrary, it will bring the opportunity of culture and refinement to all by putting an end to the wearisome labour that continues all day long; while the leisured class will learn by experience that work is a necessity for perfect culture. Q. What other objection is often .urged ? A. That State management would give rise to jobbery and corruption. Q. How may this be answered? A. By pointing to the present State organisation either of the police or the Post Office, in neither of which are jobbery and corruption conspicuous features. Q. Would not the State be in a different postion as regards the people ? A. At present it is the people's master, but under any democratic scheme of Socialism it would become their servant, and merely be charged with carrying out their will. Q. Name another objection to the practicability of Socialism? A. The cuckoo cry that “if you make all men equal to-day, they will all be unequal to-morrow, because of their different natural capabilities.” Q. What equality do Socialists aim at ? A. Equality of opportunities, not of natural powers. Q. What is the Socialist view of the duties of those who are especially gifted by nature ? A. That they owe a larger return to the community than those who are less naturally gifted. Q. What is the capitalist view of their rights and duties ? A. That they are indepen­ dent of all duties, and have the right of taxing the community, which supports them, for luxuries and waste to the full extent of their individual caprice. Q, In accordance with this view, what method do capitalists take in dealing with them ? A. Capitalists arrange that persons of extra industry and talent shall have every opportunity of enslaving their less fortunate neighbours, thus adding an inequality of conditions to the natural inequality of talent. Q. What is the Socialist method ? A. Socialists insist that the talented as well as the cunning shall be restrained by the organisation of society from appropriating the surplus­ value created by their less fortunate neighbours. IX—GLUTS AND THEIR RESULTS. Q. To what is the periodical depression of trade, with its accompanying distress among the labourers, due ? A. To the fact that individual capitalists are striving to enrich themselves alone, instead of co-operating to supply the needs of the community. Q. Explain this? A. During a period of activity, when prices are high and the markets for goods are not over-stocked, a great competition goes on among capitalists, who wish to take advantage of the high prices and produce more quickly the goods which can command them. Q. What is the effect of this competition ? A. All the available labourers are employed; all the machinery is set going ; and no effort is spared by the manufacturers to produoe the utmost quantity of the goods which are in demand on the market. �— 12 — Q. What is the inevitable result ? A. A glut is shortly created of these goods. Far more than were wanted have been made. All the store-houses are full, and no more purchasers are to be found. Q. What is the next step in the process ? A. The capitalists soon get tired of heaping up what they cannot sell, and wish to stop production. Q. How can they manage this ? A. They turn off all their extra hands, and propose such a reduction of wages that the rest agree to strike rather than accept it. Q. With what result ? A. Production is stopped for a time, and the capitalists are not obliged to pay wages, or else agree to pay only for half time until the glut has gradually disappeared, as the goods are absorbed by the public. Q. What follows? A. A fresh demand arises. The workers are all employed again, and the glut recurs with the utmost regularity. Q. Is there any necessity for this periodical distress ? A. Not the smallest, Q .What is it that vitiates the whole system of production at present? A. The pre­ vailing idea that goods are not to be produced for the sake of their usefulness, but for the sake of making a profit for capitalists and giving employment to labourers. Q. What definite evil is the result of this idea ? A. Adulteration and fraud of everv description; cheap and nasty wares driving expensive and sound goods out of the market Q Who are the greatest sufferers from all this ? A. The workers themselves. Q. In what way? A. Being the least able to protect themselves against adulteration and fraud, they are cheated to a fearful extent in all that they buy ; and are the first to suffer from a glut in the market. Q. How is this ? A. Because they are first compelled to produce more food and Ciothing than can possibly be sold at a profit, and then are deprived of the means of buying what they have themselves produced, although they are in urgent need both of food and clothing, because the capitalists throw them out of work as soon as their work­ ceases to pay its percentage. Q. What advice is given to the labourer by well-meaning reformers who do not under­ stand the labour question ? A. To be sober and thrifty. Q. Is this advice sound? A. As addressed to the individual struggling against his neighbours under the capitalist system, it is excellent. Q How can it benefit the individual? A. It may enable him to “ rise ” into the capitalist class; that is, to exchange his position in the ranks of the oppressed for one in those of the oppressors. Q. What is the Socialist criticism of this advice? A. That as a panacea for the wrongs of the system, or as a cure for the sufferings of the labourers as a class, it is inadequate , because a general improvement in intelligence, thrift, and sobriety, if shared by the whole class of labourers, merely supplies the capitalist class with a better instrument for the production of surplus-value. Q. What is the result of improvement in the ability of the workers in the present system? A. The same result as an improvement in machinery, namely, that goods are more rapidly produced by the workers, and accumulated by the capitalists ; so that the periodical glut, with its accompanying crisis, depression, and distress, is more quickly achieved than before. Q. Is there any possibility of an incidental advantage to the labourers? A. Only in this respect: the labourer is a two-edged tool in the hands of the capitalist; and when it becomes sharper and more efficient for his work, it becomes also more likely to cut the hand that uses it. Q. Explain what you mean by this ? A. A general improvement among the labourers in intelligence and sobriety will probably be followed by improved organisation, with a view to expropriating the classes that confiscate the fruits of their labour. Q. Is this the end at which so-called “ social reformers ” aim ? A. By no means; but they seem incapable of understanding either the inefficacy in one way, or the efficacy in another, of their well-meant advice to the labourers as a class. Q. What advice do the Malthusians give to the labourer ? A, To limit his family, as they think that overpopulation is the cause of the distress. Q. Is this the case I A. It has never been so in England. Q. How can this be proved ? A. By the fact that the amount of wealth produced which might be exchanged for food for the workers, if the capitalist system did not pre­ vent it, has always increased faster than the number of producers. Q. Why is this? A. Because the labour of those who are working in concert is far more efficient than that of isolated workers, and machinery vastly enhances this efficiency. Q. What is the element of truth in the Malthusian theory? A. It is perfectly true that a limited space of land cannot support an unlimited number of people, but as even England, to say nothing of the world, has not reached that limit to population, it has at present no bearing on the case. �*3 Q. What is the element of truth as regards families? A. It is perfectly true that in the present capitalist system the man who has no children at all is in a better pecuniary position than the man with a large family, since, just as in actual warfare, children in the modern competitive battle-field are an encumbrance, where every man has to fight for his living, and maintain his family as best he may. Q. How does the standpoint of the Malthusians differ from that of the Socialists’ A. The former accept the basis of the capitalist society, namely, the existence of two distinct classes of wage-payers and wage-earners, and merely advise the workers to attempt to secure a larger wage. Q. How do Socialists regard this advice ? A. They consider that the discussion as to whether the workers shall enjoy one-half or one-third of the wealth which they have produced is comparatively unimportant, and they continue to urge the rightful claim of the workers to the full value of their own productions. Q. How soon is this claim likely to be attended to ? A. As soon as ever the majority of the workers really understand their own position, and consequently become convinced of the advantages of Socialism. Q. How can the capitalists be converted to the same view? A. Appeals to justice may make isolated conversions of individual capitalists, but nothing short of a display of organised force will enable the idlers as a body to perceive the advantage of taking their due share in the necessary work of society under a just system of Socialism. X—REVOLUTION. Q. On what ground do capitalists defend the principle of competition ? A. On the eround that it brings into play a man’s best qualities. Q. Does it effect this? A. This is occasionally its result; but it also brings out his worst qualities, by stimulating him to struggle with his fellows for the relative improve­ ment of his own position rather than for the absolute advancement of the interests of all. Q. Why does this happen? A. Because in ordinary competition one man’s gain is another’s loss. Q. What is the theory of the Survival of the Fittest? A. That the class of persons who are most fitted to live and propagate their race in the conditions with which it is surrounded, is certain to survive the rest. Q. Are the existing social conditions favourable to the survival of those persons whose character renders them most valuable to society ? A. On the contrary, they favour the survival of the most valueless. Q. What is the final result of such conditions and surroundings as the filth, foul airand squalor of a town rookery ? A. The crushing out of those who are least able to adapt themselves to these surroundings; and the consequent survival of those who are most fit for filth, but least for decent social life. Q. Does the law of the Survival of the Fittest affect men in the same way as it affects the lower animals? A. No; because it is possible for men to alter their surroundings, while other animals must simply adapt themselves to them, whatever they may be. Q. What is the Revolution for which Socialists strive? A. A Revolution in the methods of the distribution of wealth corresponding to that which has already taken place in the means of its production. Q. What change has already taken place ? A . Wealth is now almost entirely pro­ duced by the associated effort of great numbers of men working in concert, instead of by individual effort as in former times; while individuals still possess command of its distribution, and use their power in their own interests. Q. How are forms of government changed so as to re-adjust them to the economical changes in the forms of production which have been silently evolving in the body of society ? A. By means of Revolutions. Q. Give an instance of this ? A. The French Revolution of 1789. Q. Did that Revolution fail to attain its objects ? A. Certainly not; but its objects were not those at which Socialists aim. Q. What were its objects ? A. The political expression of the fact that feudalism was demolished, and the reign of capitalism established on its ruins Q. What do you mean by this? A. The overthrow of the political supremacy of the landed aristocracy, and the establishment of a bourgeois plutocracy; that is, putting the political power into the hands of the merchants and money-lords of the middle­ class. Q. What change in the forms of production had rendered this inevitable? A The �fact that the possession of agricultural land had ceased to be the chief means to the attainment of wealth. Q. What, then, had taken its place ? A. The possession of capital and the use of machinery. Q. In what sense was that Revolution a selfish struggle? A. After the displacement of the upper by the middle-class in political and social supremacy, the latter established its own pow’er irrespectively of the rights of any other class. Q. Is not the struggle which precedes and heralds the Social Revolution one of selfish class interests in the same way ? A. By no means; Socialists do not aim at the supremacy of a class or section of the community at the expense of other sections. Q. Do they not wish the workers to control the State ? A. Certainly they do. Q. Is not this the supremacy of a class? A. No, for they insist that every ablebodied person of sound mind should do a fair share of necessary wcrk. When all are workers, the workers will be no longer a class, but a nation. Q. What, then will become of the class-selfishnes of the workers ? A. Selfishness will then become public spirit, when the motives which formerly led men to work for the interests and advancement of themselves alone, operate for the benefit of the whole human race with which their class has become identified. THE OBJECT. The Establishment of a Free Condition of Society based on the prin­ ciple of Political Equality, with Equal Social Rights for all and the complete Emancipation of Labour. PROGRAMME. 1. All Officers or Administrators to be elected by Equal Direct Adult Suffrage, and to be paid by the Community. 2. Legislation by the People, in such wise that no project of Law shall become legally binding till accepted by the Majority of the People. 3. The Abolition of a Standing Army, and the Establishment of a National Citizen Force; the People to decide on Peace or War. 4. All Education, higher no less than elementary, to be Free, Com­ pulsory, Secular, and Industrial for all alike. 5. The Administration of Justice to be Free and Gratuitous for all Members of Society. 6. The Land with all the Mines, Railways and other Means of Tran­ sit, to be declared and treated as Collective or Common Property. 7. Ireland and all other parts of the Empire to have Legislative Independence. 8. The Production of Wealth to be regulated by Society in the com­ mon interest of all its Members. g. The Means of Production, Distribution and Exchange to be declared and treated as Collective or Common Property. As measures called for to palliate the evils of our existing society the Social-Democratic Federation urges for immediate adoption :— The Compulsory Construction of healthy artizan’s and agricultural labourers’ dwellings in proportion to the population, such dwellings to be let at rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance alone. Free Compulsory Education for all classes, together with the provision of at least one wholesome meal a day in each school. �Eight Hours or less to be the normal working day in all trades. Cumulative Taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not exceeding /"300 a year. State Appropriation of Railways, with or without compensation. The establishment of National Banks, which shall absorb all private institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit. Rapid Extinction of the National Debt. Nationalisation of the Land, and organisation cf agricultural and industrial armies under State control on Co-operative principles. As means for the peaceable attainment of these objects the SocialDemocratic Federation advocates : Adult Suffrage. Annual Parliaments. Proportional Represen­ tation. Payment of Members ; and Official Expenses of Election out of the Rates. Abolition of the House of Lords and all Hereditary Authorities. Disestablishment and Disendowment of all State Churches. Membership of Branches of the Federation is open to all who agree with its objects, and subscribe One Penny per week. Those ready to form Branches should communicate with the Secretary, Social-Democratic Federation, Bridge House, Blackfriars. E. C. All who are interested, in Socialism should, read. THE FOLLOWING PUBLICATIONS OF THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, London, E.C. Which will be sent post free at the published prices on receipt of an order amounting to one shilling or more. (The Publications of the Modern Press can be obtained from W. L. Rosenberg, 261, East Tenth Street, New York City.) Socialism made Plain. The social and political manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation issued in June 1883 ; with “The Unemployed,” a Manifesto issued after the “ Riots in the West End” on 8th February, 1886. Sixty-first thousand. Crown 8-vo., paper cover, price id. “ JUSTICE,” the Organ of the Social Democracy. Every Saturday, one penny. Socialist Rhymes from Justice. By J. L. Joynes. Reprinted chiefly Demy 8-vo., price id. Summary of the Principles of Socialism. By H. M. Hyndman and William Morris. Second edition, 64-pp. crown 8-vo., in wrapper designed by Wm. Morris, price 4d. This gives an account of the growth of capitalist production, and concludes with a statement of the demands of English Socialists for the immediate future. Herbert Spencer on Socialism. By Frank Fairman. 16-pp. crown 8-vo., price id. �'x'\x\'cw\xye^A>: I Socialism and Soldiering*; with some comments on the Army Enlistment Fraud. By George Bateman (Late 23rd Regi­ ment), with Portrait. With an introduction by H. H. Champion (Late Royal Artillery). Price One Penny. The Working Man’s Programme (Arbeiter Programm). By Ferdinand Lassalle. Translated from the German by Edward Peters. Crown 8-vo., paper cover, price 6d. The Robbery of the Poor. By W. H. P. Campbell. Demy 8-vo., paper cover, price 6d. The Appeal to the Young. By Prince Peter Kropotkin. Translated from the French by H. M. Hyndman and reprinted from Justice. Royal 8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny. The most eloquent and noble appeal to the generous emotions ever penned by a scientific man. Its author has just suffered five years’ imprisonment at the hands of the French Republic for advocating the cause of the workers Wage-Labour and Capital. From the German of Karl Marx translated by J. L. Joynes and reprinted from Justice. New and cheaper edition, Royal 8-vo., price id. By Edward Carpenter —Social Progress and Indi­ vidual Effort; Desirable Mansions; and Co-operative Production. One penny each. The Man with the Red Flag: Being John Burns’ Speech at the Old Bailey, when tried-for Seditious Conspiracy, on April gth, 1886. (From the Verbatim Notes of the official short­ hand reporter.) With Portrait. Price threepence. The Socialist Catechism. By J. L. Joynes. Reprinted with additions from Justice. Demy 8-vo., price id. 20th thousand. Socialism and Slavery. By H. M. Hyndman. (In The Emigration Fraud Exposed. By H. M. What an Eight Hours Bill Means. By T. Mann reply to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s article on “ The Coming Slavery.”) New Edition, with portrait. 16 pp. Royal 8-vo., price one penny. Hyndman. With a Portrait of the Author. Reprinted by per­ mission from the Nineteenth Century for February, 1885. Crown 8-vo., price one penny. (Amalgamated Engineers). New edition with portrait. Thousand. Price one penny. Socialism and the Worker. By F. A. Sixth Sorge. Price id. An explanation in the simplest language of tne main idea of Socialism. The Chicago Riots and the Class War in the United States. By H. M. Hyndman. Reprinted from Time, June, 1886. Price one penny. International Trade Union Congress, held at Paris, August, 1886. Report by Adolphe Smith. Price Three-Halfpence. 24-pp., Royal 8-vo. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The socialist catechism Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Joynes, J. L. (James Leigh) [-1893.] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 4, [2] p. ; 23 cm. Notes: Reprinted with additions from: Justice. 23rd thousand edition. Publisher's list on unnumbered page at the end. Information on the Social-Democratic Federation, p. 14. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1885 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G4976 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A defence of atheism: being a lecture delivered in Mercantile Hall, Boston, April 10, 1861), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Capitalism Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/2afb5229c51b2363f903dc1d87643e5d.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=F2umHn1msFDuqoq1pEqYbNkrHHtF7gFbSMvevmdmDNJY8iyXLc0Oj4LqdWTrM%7EHxlZmpF7ABNbXrEpX8Jfkoe%7Ed741G-JMzAWnY48HUCLS4BccYbN4VRYmL-boZ12j1MD9A1mUdc15lxFatDvzt3WGq51LJwncneDXVYttrpcbUv4HkiLzSGXGhRntWXXrfXyfegPiWOWaZjt6rtunkHkiNp-R9vRzGEEZ1JdLgR1FS-7Znp4NS5nXn5HJ4p%7EuXF-cDgTAAAkB4hH1YKkii3qrXACTRihEJqiaernW%7EVtK5u7rA1Dz%7Eb4ZNEKfkk0krJ4KmmcLn5W1hdFAFhUAFFvw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 1e6cbbb6beadbd8db9d4b4dd7f10f1e4 PDF Text Text ■nit S PRICE ONE PENNY. SEVENTY-FIRST THOUSAND I SOCIALISM MADE PLAIN AND “THE UNEMPLOYED” BEING TWO MANIFESTOES OF THE SOG/A L-DEMOGRA TIG FEDERA TION. Address Secretary, Social-Democratic Federation, Bridge House, Blackfriars. E.C. EDUCATE. AGITATE. ORGANISE. THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C. 1886. Agent for U.S.A., W. L. ROSENBERG, 56, EAST STREET, NEW YORK CITY. FOURTH �Summary of the Principles of Socialism. By H. M. Hyndman and William Morris. Second edition, 64-pp. crown 8-vo., in wrapper designed by Wm. Morris, price 4d. This gives an account of the growth of capitalist production, and con­ cludes with a statement of the demands of English Socialists for the imme­ diate future. The Emigration Fraud Exposed. By H. M. Hyndman. With a portrait of the Author. Reprinted by permission from the Nineteenth Century for February, 1885. Crown 8-vo., price id. The Socialist Catechism. By J. L. Joynes. Royal 8-vo., Reprinted with additions from Justice. price id. Fifteenth thousand. Socialist Rhymes. J. By Reprinted chiefly from Justice. L. Joynes. Royal 8-vo., price id. Wage-Labour and Capital. By Karl Marx. Translated by J. L. Joynes and reprinted from Justice. Price 2d. This is the only work of the great Socialist thinker which has been translated into English. Socialism and the Worker. Sorge. By F. A. Price id. An explanation in the simplest language of the main idea of Socialism. John Williams and the History of the Social-Democratic Federation. 8-vo., price id. Socialism and With portrait. Slavery. By H. Royal M. Hyndman. (In reply Mr. Herbert Spencer’s article on the “ Coming Slavery ”). New Edition. Price id. The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, E.G. And W. L. ROSENBERG, 56, East Fourth Street, New York City. �SOCIALISM MADE PLAIN, BEING THE Social and Political Manifesto of the Democratic Federation EDUCATE. AGITATE ORGANISE. Fellow Citizens, qpHE time has come when it is absolutely necessary that the mass of the people should seriously take in hand their own business unless they are content to find themselves in the near future worse off than they have ever yet been. At present, social and political power is monopolised by xhose who live upon the labour of their fellows; and Tories or Conservatives, Whigs, Liberals or Radicals strive only to keep the workers ignorant of the truths which most nearly con­ cern them. After the Reform Bill of 1832 the capi­ talists entered into alliance with the landlords except on one question, and from the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 to this day the lords of the money-bag and the lords of the soil have together been absolute masterc of the millions who labour throughout the United Kingdom. So complete has been their control that since the year 1848 no vigorous attempt has even been made to overthrow it. But what has been the re­ sult to the workers of this supremacy of the luxurious classes ? During fifty years our labourers have com­ peted against one another for wages which barely suffice to keep them aUve. Whilst the realised �weaith and the annual income of the country have more than trebled, those who create these riches re­ main a wage-slave class, overworked and underfed, at the mercy of every crisis and the victims of each suc­ ceeding depression. The improved machinery, the extension of railways, the great steam and electric communications—that vast increase of the power of man over nature which has been the main feature of our epoch, has brought luxury for the few, misery and degradation for the many. Even in the past ten years what have we seen ? The interests of Great Britain utterly neglected, Ireland shamefully misgoverned, India ruined and South Africa estranged. In 1874 the Liberals were dismissed for incapacity and Conser­ vatives ruled in their stead for six years. Not a single measure did they introduce during that long tenure of office which could in any way lighten the lot of the millions who toil. The Conservatives having been turned out in disgust the Liberals again try their h|and, and once more not a single measure is before Parliament, not a single measure is proposed for future legislation, which can benefit the working men and women who are really the source of all our wealth. Fellow-Citizens the further success of this pitiful trickery depends upon your ignorance and will last as long as your apathy. Landlords and capitalists, who o ahi the House of Lords and fill the House of Commons, wish nothing better than to protect their interests under the pretence of looking after yours. Take up then your own heritage, push aside these wealthy huck­ sters of both factions who trade upon your labour, and trust for the future in your own strength alone. �Consider the figures below. Total Production of the United Kingdom................................. £1,300,000,000 Taken by Landlords, Capitalists and Profitmongers .......... 1,000,000,000 Left for the Producers.................. 300,000,000 Study these figures all who toil and suffer that others may be lazy and rich ; look upon the poverty, the star­ vation, the prostitution around you ye who labour and return the value of your entire day’s wages to the employ­ ing classes in the first two or three hours of your day’s work. Ponder on these facts, reflect upon these figures, men and women of England, and then ask yourselves, whether it is worth while for such a result as this to bow down in slavish subjection before your “ governing classes,” whether you will not rather demand and obtain the full fruits of your labour and become your own governing class yourselves. Submit then no longer to a system of Parliamentary Government which is maintained in the interests of those who rob and oppress you—which has proved itself for generations to be alike a failure and a fraud. EDUCATE ! AGITATE ! ORGANISE ! Fellow Citizens, we of the Democratic Federation demand complete adult suffrage for every man and woman in these islands, because in this way alone dan the whole people give free expression to their will; we are in favor of paid delegates and annual Conventions because by this means alone can the people control their representatives; we stand up for the direct r& ference of all grave issues to the country at larg<&, and for the punishment as felony of every species ol �corruption, because thus only can tyranny be checked and bribery uprooted ; we call for the abolition of all hereditary authority, because such authority is neces­ sarily independent of the mass of the people. But all these reforms when secured mean only that the men and women of these islands will at length be masters in their own house. Mere political machinery is worth­ less unless used, to produce good social conditions. All wealth is due to labour ; therefore to the labourers all wealth is due. But we are strangers in our own country. Thirty thousand persons own the land of Great Britain against the 30,000,000 who are suffered to exist therein. A long series of robberies and confiscations has deprived us of the soil which should be ours. The organised brute force of the few has for generations robbed and tyrannised over the unorganised brute force of the many. We now call for Nationalisation of the Land. We claim that land in country and land in towns, mines, parks, mountains, moors should be owned by the people for the people, to be held, used, built over and culti­ vated upon such terms as the people themselves see fit to ordain. The handful ot marauders who now hold possession have and can have no right save brute force against the tens of millions whom they wrong. But private ownership of land in our present society is only one and not the worst form of monopoly which enables the wealthy classes to use the means of pro­ duction against the labourers whom they enslave. Of the £1,000,000,000 taken by the classes who live without labour out of a total yearly production of ^1,300,000,000, the landlords who have seized Our soil, and shut us out �from its enjoyment, absorb little more than £60,000,000 as their direct share. The few thousand persons who own the National Debt, saddled upon the community by a landlord Parliament, exact ^28,000,000 yearly from the labour of their countrymen for nothing ; the share­ holders who have been allowed to lay hands upon our great railway communications take a still larger sum. Above all, the active capitalist class, the loan-mongers, the farmers, the mine-exploiters, the contractors, the middle-men, the factory-lords—these, the modern slave-drivers, these are they who, through their money, machinery, capital, and credit turn every advance in human knowledge, every further improve­ ment in human dexterity, into an engine for accumu­ lating wealth out of other men’s labour, and for exacting more and yet more surplus value out of the wage-slaves whom they employ. So long as the means of production, either of raw materials or of manufactured goods are the monopoly of a class, so long must the labourers on the farm, in the mine or in the factory sell themselves for a bare subsistence wage. As land must in future be a national possession, so must the other means of producing and distributing wealth. The creation of wealth is already a social business, where each is forced to co-operate with his neighbour; it is high time that exchange of the produce should be social too, and removed from the control of individual greed and individual profit. As stepping-stones to a happier period, we urge for immediate adoption :— The COMPULSORY CONSTRUCTION of healthy artisans’ and agricultural labburers’ dwellings in pro­ �8 portion to the population, such dwellings to be let at rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance alone. FREE COMPULSORY EDUCATION for all classes, together with the provision of at least one wholesome meal a day in each school. EIGHT HOURS or less to be the normal WORK­ ING DAY in all trades. CUMULATIVE TAXATION upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not exceeding ^300 a year. STATE APPROPRIATION with or without compensation. OF RAILWAYS, The establishment of NATIONAL BANKS, which shall absorb all private institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit. RAPID DEBT. EXTINCTION of the NATIONAL NATIONALISATION OF THE LAND, and organisation of agricultural and industrial armies under State control on co-operative principles. By these measures a healthy, independent, and thoroughly educated people will steadily grow up around us, ready to abandon that baneful competition for starvation wages which ruins our present workers, ready to organise the labour of each for the benefiit of all, determined, too, to take control finally of the entire social and political machinery of a State in which class distinctions and class privileges shall cease to be. Do any say we attack private property ? We deny 'Vp attack only that private property for a few �thousand loiterers and siave-drivers, which renders all property in the fruits of their own labour impossible for millions. We challenge that private property which renders poverty at once a necessity and a crime. Fellow-Citizens, we appeal to every man and woman among you who is weary of this miserable huckster’s society, where poverty and prostitution, fraud and adulteration, swindling and jobbery, luxury and debau­ chery reign supreme, we appeal to you to work with us in a never-ceasing effort to secure a happier lot for our people and their children, and to hold up a high ideal of national greatness for those who come after. Such an ideal of true greatness and glory, needs but intelligence, enthusiasm, and combination, to make it a reality even in our own day. We, at least, will never falter. We stretch out our hands for help, co-operation, and encouragement, to all creeds and all nationalities, ready ourselves to render assistance in every struggle against class injustice and individual greed. The land of England is no mean heritage; there is enough and to spare for all; with the powers mankind now possess wealth may easily be made as plentiful as water at the expense of trifling toil. But to-day the worn-out wage­ slaves of our boasted civilisation look hopelessly at the wealth which they have created to be devoured only by the rich and their hangers-on. To the abject poor patriotism is but a mockery, all talk of happiness, of beauty, of morality, is a sneer. We call, then, upon every lover of freedom to support us in our endeavour to form a real party of the people, which shall secure a noble future for our own and other lands. The aims and objects of the Democratic Federation �are before you. organised effort. Success can only be achieved by Educate ! We shall need all our intelligence. Agitate ! We shall need all our enthusiasm. Organise ! We shall need all our force. EDUCATE ! (Signed) June, 1883. A GITA TE ! ORGA NISE ! The Executive Committee, Democratic Federation. The Federation consists of branches in various towns, membership of which is open to all who hold the prin­ ciples set forth in the manifesto of the body, and who subscribe to its programme. Subscription id. per week. Further information can be obtained by reading EVERY SATURDAY. “JUSTICE” w 1 ONE PENNY. A paper managed by working men, and edited by a working man. It can be obtained from any newsagent, or will be forwarded for 13 weeks to any address if is. 8d. is sent to The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, London, E.C. Full particulars can be obtained by writing to the Secretary, Social-Democratic Federation, Bridge House, Blackfriars, E.C. �MANIFESTO OF THE Social-Democratic Federation. Issued after the West End Riots, Feb. 8, 1886. 15^ February. Fellow Citizens, We invite you to attend a mass meeting of employed and unemployed workers in Hyde Park, at 3.30 p.m. punctually, on Sunday next, February 21st, to demand that the Government should organise the labour of those who are now starving, owing to no fault of their own, and should, as at other periods of distress, com­ mence useful public works, paying to those engaged rates of wages sufficient to ensure a healthy subsistence. In calling this meeting we earnestly appeal to all who attend it, whether in or out of work, to help us to keep order. Those who understand the vital importance of the Social-Democratic movement to workers of every grade will be the first to put down any attempts of their enemies to discredit the cause of the people, or to endanger that right of public meeting which can alone enable the producing class to gain any real advantage without bitter civil strife. The objects of the Social-Democrats when attained will benefit not the workers only but even those who to-day live in luxury, at the expense of the misery and �12 degradation of the labourers. The present hopeless breakdown shows clearly enough that the upper and middle classes are unable to handle the industrial machinery even to their own profit. Hundreds of thousands of our fellows eager to do' useful work, in order to maintain themselves and their families in reasonable comfort, find that they cannot earn sufficient wages to give them the bare necessaries of life. At the same time the very goods which they themselves most want are unsaleable because the producers are thus denied the possibility of purchasing them. Even the employed must know that the lot of their workless fellows to-day may be theirs to-morrow. The uncer­ tainty of employment is yearly increasing in every trade, while in many branches men over forty years of age are systematically refused work. Hard times now come much oftener than formerly and each crisis lasts longer than the one before. The reason of this is that the workers themselves, having no property, are forced to compete with one another for subsistence wages, and have nothing to do with the dis­ posal of the wealth which they produce for the profit of others. When capitalists cannot mike that profit, they cut their men adrift. What is to be done? The landlords and capitalists practically confess that they, at least do not know. When forced to recognize that people will no longer starve in silence, they condemn skilled artizans as well as famine-stricken labourers to prove that poverty is their only crime by breaking stones or picking oakum at tenpence a day; or they endeavour to salve their consciences, shocked by the misery which clamours at �*3 their doors, by the pitiful expedient of an unasked-for charity. Social-Democrats alone dare deal directly with the difficulty. More than two years ago as palliatives for the serious distress which even then prevailed, we issued the following proposals :— “ i.—That no Government servant be employed at his or her present wages for a longer period than eight hours in each day. This alone would give room for many now out of work, seeing that the ordinary hours of work in the Post Office and other State establish­ ments are from ten to twelve hours, or more, in the day. 2. —That all uncultivated Crown, or other lands, or lands now in pasture, which in the opinion of skilled agriculturists, would best pay to cultivate, be at once worked with improved machinery by such of the unem­ ployed as are accustomed to or would prefer agricultural occupation. These labourers to be paid the rate of wages which, in the judgment of a board of assessors, shall be sufficient to keep them and their families in health and comfort, or that such necessary food be sup­ plied at cost at a general meal, lodging being provided on the spot. An equitable portion of the profits, if any, derived 'from such farming operations to be divided from time to time among the people employed. 3. —That any public works oi importance in or near any industrial centre—such as artisans’ dwellings, em­ bankment of rivers, construction of canals or aqueducts —should be begun at once instead of their commence­ ment being deferred ; and that the same rate of wages be paid, in proportion to cost of living, to the workers employed that is paid to the agricultural labourers, or �*4 that their feeding be conducted on wholesale principles as above. That if, on valuation of works completed any profit should be shown above what such works would have cost, at rates of wages for similar work averaged for the last five years, an equitable proportion of such profit be divided among the labourers. 4. —That, where possible, light relief works on similar principles should be commenced for those women or men, who are incapable of heavy labour; or that they be engaged on clothing or other work which they could exchange through the State with the products of those who are at work upon the land. 5. —That the cost of the initial proceedings and the payment of wages be met by the ratepayers and the State in equal portions, or in such proportions as may be determined. The advantage to the ratepavers is that able-bodied persons would be engaged upon beneficial remunerative labour, instead of upon useless workhouse tasks ; the advantage to the State would be that no permanent pauperism would result from the prevailing depression. Therefore the Municipalities and the State should at once organise the unemployed labour and thereby save expense later.” To these we would now add free dinners for the children in all Board Schools, as nothing is more terrible for the workers at times like these than to see the health of their offspring ruined for life by sheer lack of nourishment. Is this incendiarism ? Are these proposals anarch­ ical ? That they can be but temporary expedients we readily admit. But every man must acknowledge that a society in which the statement of such elemen­ �tary truths as that men should be allowed to work and children to eat is accounted revolutionary cannot long be propped up even by the adoption of the continental methods of police repression or the arbitrary despotism of a military governor. All the facts around us confirm us in the conviction that the class supremacy due to historical development is even now being sapped by the growth of new economical foims. The scientific truths on which this belief isfounded, can be studied in the authorised publications of the Social-Democratic Federation. We call then upon the workers of London and of these islands to stand side by side with us in orderly union, to the end that they may organise for themselves and for their children a sound system of national and international co-operation which shall happily replace the anarchy and misery of to-day. The work that we have taken up is no light one, but the object is noble and the reward is sure. Let the governing classes face the inevitable downfall of a decaying civilisation without hypocrisy and without panic. On them rests the responsibility of a peaceful or a forcible issue to the last great class struggle of our times. Here in the centre of capitalist domination and commercial greed we at least are resolved to continue our efforts, confident that they must lead to the final emancipation of labour and to the conquest of the future by the workers of the world. (Signed) The General Council of the Social-Democratic Federation. �The Working Man’s Programme (Arbeiter Programm). By Ferdinand Lassalle. Translated from the German by Edward Peters. Crown 8-vo., paper cover, price 6d. Social Progress and Individual Effort. Desirable Mansions Co-operative Production. By Edward Carpenter. Price id. each. The Appeal to the Young. By Prince Peter Kropotkin. Translated from the French by H. M. Hyndman and reprinted from Justice. Royal 8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny. Tenth thousand. The most eloquent and noble appeal to the generous emotions ever pen­ ned by a scientific man. Its author is now suffering five years imprison­ ment at the hands of the French Republic for advocating the cause of the workers. Herbert Spencer on Socialism. By Frank Fairman. 16-pp. crown 8-vo., price id. The Robbery of the Poor. By w. H. P. Campbell. New Edition. Paper wrapper, price 6d. The Man with the Red Flag: Being John Burns’ Speech at the Old Bailey, when tried for Seditious Conspiracy, on April gth, 1886. (From the Verbatim Notes of the official shorthand reporter). With Portrait. Price 3d. What an Eight Hour Bill Means. By T. Mann, (Amalgamated Engineers). Price id. Socialism and Slavery. By H. M. Hyndman. (In reply to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Article on “The Coming Slavery ”). New Edition. 16-pp., Royal'8-vo. Price id. The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C. And W. L. ROSENBERG, 56, East Fourth Street, New York City. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Socialism made plain and "The Unemployed" : being two manifestoes of the Social-Democratic Federation Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Social-Democratic Federation Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 15, [1] p. ; 19 cm. Notes: First manifesto (p. 1 to 10) titled, 'Socialism Made Plain, being the Social and Political Manifesto of the Democratic Federation'. Second manifesto (p. 11 to 15) titled, 'Manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation. Issued after the West End Riots, Feb. 8 1886'. End of text of first manifesto dated June, 1883. Second manifesto dated, 15th February [1886]. Publisher's advertisements on page [2] and on unnumbered page at end. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1886 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T465 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Socialism made plain and "The Unemployed" : being two manifestoes of the Social-Democratic Federation), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Political Manifesto Socialism Unemployment https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/a49e965c4f1a5473e509bab60d2dafd6.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=kbV1I7nMisC073X83mk0mNgA4RVfMrSQjBLUEqYoA2qSCtNE-nqcTdU6sdJVBviI9meDtjQdDYdkKbiyK4fKZZUaGBXT9fIvLBdViRArNpCs4tSHnuCj0UpTx2AiXD0vWwenc5ejq3geaYEK-AGEyvUVsX0M6GdwFmuSQDPbRGbEFn0xjN42b-LcdEJrLZ-yHuuzBVJr1aT0LU7RvAnTGsoXPwE6mzq9skAMTYmQsO1PVXRukbSXM5w%7E7ta%7EFzo4KrMEesHA9DUQPWmsPCsBk34V8vp3vQ0whCZm4mi2jga8sXk4DKGT6Rm3ttxPoTnDPSK9usLscXbAvZ8Skg3jsA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3f1c660371c8ed0e3462884a4c3238d0 PDF Text Text �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The new Book of Kings Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Davidson, John Morrison [1843-1916] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 123, [5] p. ; 19 cm. Notes: List of reviews of the book in four unnumbered pages at the end. Date of publication from KVK. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1885?] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T399 Subject The topic of the resource Republicanism Monarchy Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The new Book of Kings), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English History Monarchy Republicanism Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/6ea73c16174c3e137d46e7a0c3d5cdd9.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=mj8kpcHBcsD7NqmD9kxCuRrMaDOKTfl7ZzktxWqlc%7EX5U-nqaXOd9Ssttf8kAikIFFVcVOPCz7Q3skc6Tsf5NlhBKynljdu%7ExPnMtbEoufe0y0xZAiUdG5pPKCrTmAiKFmU11LSs5jpqArgmWoG6o2MObaax7Y75HhbloYG8shJjPRzayMRw8xzcUm%7EaZA2Jfo-kuPVDtQrAf40k6VA-J3mOI7af8kRlo18mlC-Napndbcc2VWRmq9HDr8S2dpTWD-%7EoRtEHQ%7EmgA%7EXe751MmSyxVXbXgxsWlbLhuFDRwVHzM%7E7931Wl2dLd6H6KjTpdw94r7TggRc5CJ9FlbudYgA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c029b94fa1cf05ebac9475f426a0d7a9 PDF Text Text 11 PROBLEM INDUSTRIAL SOLVED. BY W. B. ROBERTSON. “ England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every kind—yet England is dying of inanition. With unabated bounty the land of England blooms and grows; waving with yellow harvests; thick-studded with workshops, industrial implements, with fifteen millions of workers, understood to be the strongest, the cunningest, and the willingest our earth ever had ; these men are here, the work they have done, the fruit they have realised is here, abundant, exuberant on every hand of us; and behold some baleful fiat as of Enchantment has gone forth, saying, ‘ Touch it not, ye master-workers, ye master-idlers ; none of you can touch it, no man of you shall be the better for it; this is enchanted fruit.’ ”— Thomas Carlyle {Past and Present}. ----- LENDING sb LONDON: THE MODERN PRESS, 13, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. �CON TEN 7 S. Overproduction ------ Overpopulation ....... Remedy ......... �OVERPRODUCTION. —I. Y over-production is meant that there are more commodities produced than can be sold. The problem, therefore, in connexion with over-production is, why can this surplus of commodities not be sold? .Many writers, among them John Stuart Mill, deny the possibility of a general over-supply. They maintain that, while there may be over­ production as regards one or more kinds of commodities, there cannot be over-production in all kinds, so long as there is a human want un­ satisfied. It is impossible, for instance, to have an over-supply of food so long as millions of our fellow-men are in need of the barest necessities of life. If there be any strength in an argument like this at all, it would follow, or rather it is implied in such argument, that the mere need, the mere human desire, for any given commodity is sufficient to set the machinery in motion to produce it. Here is a man with an empty stomach and in need of a meal, this of itself, is, on such grounds, sufficient to procure such meal; or here is another man with a bare back, and in need of a coat, this is enough to procure him the coat. Now it must be plain to every one, that those that have nothing but empty stomachs and bare backs cannot influence in the slightest degree the quantity of food that may be produced, or the quantity of coats that may be made. Is any farmer going to plough and sow a field for men that come to him with nothing except empty stomachs; or is any tailor going to make coats for men that have nothing to show but bare backs ? Here, however, from one of the Cobden Club publications, are facts that show clearly enough that the quantity of food produced has nothing to do with the number of people that are m need of food, that in fact the more food there is, the greater will be the number of people in want. In this pamphlet * we have the paradoxical statement that the present depression, which set m in 1884, “ was the natural and necessary result of the improved and fairly good harvest with which this country was favoured in that year.” This statement the author (Augustus Mongredien) proves by figures taken from the Boardof Trade returns. Thus, in 1884, our imports and exports together were twenty-five million odd pounds sterling less than the average of the four previous years. This * Trade Depression : Recent and Present. �4 diminution is accounted for by the fact that in the same year “ our foreign supplies of cereals fell short of the previous years to the extent of 15^ millions of pounds sterling ; and to that extent, therefore, we may infer that the home harvests of 1884 had exceeded in yield the harvests of the previous few years.” The effect of this extra harvest was, according to our authority, to lessen directly our importations of cereals ; we had the cereals at home, and consequently did not require to buy them from foreign countries. Indirectly our exports were also lessened. Our whole foreign trade, exports and imports together, by this good harvest, Mr. Mongredien computes, was reduced by 43 millions of pounds sterling ; for he considers the effects of this good harvest as extending into 1885. After, making allowances he concludes, that this 43 millions worth of goods, represents from 2,500 to 3,000 cargoes; by so many cargoes, therefore, would our shipowners’ trade be lessened ; they would have that number of cargoes the less to carry, This sudden diminution in their business threw idle ships upon their hands; it then affected the shipbuilders, for the shipowners having more ships than they could find employment for, were of course not likely to order more. “ As a natural consequence,” Mr. Mongredien proceeds, “ the diminished construction of ships (in which the consumption of iron enters so largely) occasioned a propor­ tionate falling off in the demand for that metal, so that (other causes assisting) the wave of depression extended to the iron trade, and then spread to the closely connected coal-producing industries and others, which they influence more or less directly. Moreover, it would necessarily follow from there being between 2,500 and 3,000 fewer cargoes to load and unload at our chief ports, London, Liverpool, Glas­ gow, &c., that there would be less demand for persons living by that kind of labour, so that a number of dock labourers of all sorts would be thrown out of work. . . . On examination we find that the industries which really did most suffer from the recent and present depression are precisely those which we have enumerated above.” Such then is the account of trade depression given by the Cobden Club. There can be no questioning its accuracy so far as it goes; it leaves us helpless, however—in fact, it paralyses us. The farmer always endeavours to make his labour as productive as possible—the better his crops the more he rejoices, and the more does the nation rejoice with him. How tempered must this joy be though, if its cause is also to be the means of throwing thousands of hard working men out of work, and depriving them of the necessaries of life ! The bounties of Nature would thus seem to benefit no one, for the more bountiful she is, the less wrork is there for people to do, and in consequence the less able are they to get at these bounties. Besides the foregoing facts, we have others showing that .people may and do suffer want in the midst of plenty. The stocks of wheat held in Liverpool at the end of 1885 were 3,578,938 centals, while at the end of 1884 there were only 1,869,146 centals. Now, the winter 1885-6 was marked by great distress throughout the country; and yet we were more abundantly supplied in food-stuffs than we had ever been, for the figures taken at other ports besides Liverpool showed the same increase. The argument, therefore, that a general overproduction is impossible while there is human want can no longer be maintained. It now remains for us to explain why overproduction comes about, and �5 why it is, as already remarked, that the more abundant commodities are, the greater will be the number of people in want. For this purpose it will be necessary for us to say a word upon the system of renumerating labour. The remuneration of every kind of labour is fixed in the same way, viz., by competition. This competition may be amongst the employers, or amongst the employed. When there is a great deal of work to be done, when everybody is in employment, and there is still a demand for more men, these additional men must be drawn from other masters ; and to be so drawn inducements in the shape of higher wages must be held out to them. Under circumstances like these wages tend to rise. In a state of society, for example, such as that presented by a newly settled country where human labour is little aided by machinery, the labouring classes are,, it is well known, highly paid. The reason of this is because labourers are few compared with the amount of work that is offered. For these few labourers employers compete amongst themselves —each one holding out better inducements than the other. Take America some years ago ; wages were high then because there were more labourers wanted than could be got. Not only were wages high, but masters were very civil to their servants, as is evidenced by the fact that servants were euphemistically called “ helps,” allowed to sit at the same table with their employers, and treated in every way as equals. This courtesy, on the part of employers, is rapidly disappearing with the cause that gave rise to it; for labourers are no longer scarce in America, and if a servant dislikes to be called a servant, he can go about his busi­ ness—there are plenty others willing to take his place. It was the scarcity of labour that gave rise to the appearance of a system of equality in America, which many attributed to the Republican form of Govern­ ment. The form of Government had nothing whatever to do with it. So much then for the fixing of wages when labour is scarce. When labour is plentiful, when there are a great many seeking work, the labourers compete with one another for such employment as there is to be had. This of course brings wages down. It is useless for a man to offer his services for five shillings a day, when there are plenty others willing to do the same thing for two shillings and sixpence. Thus one man underbids another, and the one whose necessities are the greatest is the one that will accept the lowest terms. It is this competi­ tion amongst the working-classes that has brought wages down to star­ vation point in the simpler kinds of work. Starving men and women compete with starving men and women, and are glad to get the oppor­ tunity of working long hours every day for a few coppers ; because this is better than nothing at all. The foregoing then is the method upon which wages are fixed, and it operates in every department of human activity. The reason that a navvy is worse paid than a mechanic is simply because there are more men able to do navvy’s work than mechanic’s work, and the competition is consequently keener amongst the navvies than amongst the mechanics. We might go through all the different kinds of labour, and we wnuld find that wages in each kind are high or low according to the relation between the number of men seeking employment, and the quantity of employment to be got. The law of wages, then, may be stated in these words: Wages vary according to the relation between the quantity of labour offered and the quantity of labour required. �6 If people had borne this in mind, we would not have had so many ex­ pressions.of surprise at the fact that our working population has made so little, if, indeed, any progress. We often hear our great wealth spoken of, the wonderful strides we have made, and yet only a few seem, and we are told this with astonishment, to have participated in our increased power. All this is quite in accordance with what Political Economy has predicted, as is shown by the following passage from Ricardo;—“ If the shoes and clothing of the labourer could, by improvements in machinery, be produced by one fourth of the labour now necessary to their production, they would probably fall 75 per cent.; but so far is it from being true, that the labourer would thereby be enabled permanently to consume four coats, or lour pairs of shoes, instead of one, that his wages would in no long time be adjusted by the effects of competition, and the stimulus to popuation, to the new value of the necessaries on which they were expended. If these improvements extended to all the objects of the labourers’ consump­ tion, we should find him, probably at the end of a very few years, in possession of only a small, if any, adddition to his enjoyments.” This was written at the beginning of the present century. It afnounts to saying, “ It makes no difference how much you improve your methods of production, the position of the labourer will not be one whit the better; he will not enjoy any more of the necessaries and conveniences of life, his command over these necessaries and conveniences will always be just enough to enable him to subsist and to raise up more labourers.” This is perfectly true. It was at the beginning of the century, as we have just remarked, that Ricardo wrote the passage. Since then, we have introduced improve­ ments into every kind of work, -and the result is as predicted. The labourers are poor and ignorant; they still toil unceasingly; and they think themselves lucky if they can get the opportunity of undergoing this toil. We shall now endeavour to give more pointedly, the reason of this anomalous position, the reason why in the midst of plenty people starve, why, in fact, the more plentiful things are the less able are we to get at them. As Carlyle says:—“ We have more riches than any nation ever had before ; we have less good of them than any nation ever had before. Our successful industry is hitherto unsuccessful; a strange success if we stop here ! In the midst of plethoric plenty, the people perish ; with gold walls and full barns, no man feels himself safe or satisfied. Workers, master-workers, un workers, all men come to a pause ; stand fixed, and cannot farther. Have’we actually got enchanted then ; accursed by some God1” Now let us offer a simple illustration of some of the economic effects of such a system of remunerating labour. Suppose that the only thing we did in this country was to make cotton—a single industry is supposed because it simplifies matters ; suppose, moreover, that we could make enough cotton to supply our own requirements for that article, and had enough to send to other countries for our food and whatever else we needed. At the beginning of the centruy we will further suppose that everybody is employed, that there is nobody out of work, and the wages are good enough to keep them comfortably and respectably. By and by improved methods of production and transit are introduced, and to such an extent that one man can do as much as five formerly did. As these improvements are applied four men out of every five would be thrown �out of work ; wages, moreover, would be reduced, for rather than be thrown out of work the men would offer their services at a lower rate, and competition amongst the workers would become keener. Here, then, with an increasing power of production, we would have a reduced number of consumers—these too getting a smaller share of the produce of their labour. What under such circumstances can be more natural than a glut, than over-production ? With such a fair start then at the beginning of the century, we should be as bad to-day as we now actually are. The men that had been thrown out of work with every successive improvement, and their families, would have to live somehow ; many of them would become thieves and vagrants, many of them paupers. All this too would come about independently of the extraordinary tendency of population to increase. When we take this into account we can only wonder, not that evils are so rampant in society, but that society has continued so long upon such a basis. The hard lot of man then would appear not to be due to the niggard­ liness of nature as we have been taught; to have no connection with the curse that doomed him to eat his bread “ by the sweat of his brow.” It is due to a mere convention, the shadowy nature of which will appear clearly enough later on. The real significance of over-production is to reduce our present indus­ trial system to an absurdity. It is ridiculous for people to have to starve because they have grown too much food, to go unclad because they have made too many clothes, and unhoused because they have built too many houses. There would be work for all the unemployed to-morrow if the half of London were destroyed; there is nothing like calamities for trade. By bringing about over-production, then, the working population has proved our present industrial system to be false; and how very unequal that system is we see every day. Here in a few words is one of its most ■ glaring inequalities. The governing class has said to the working class, you go to work under this system—your share of the result of your labour will be fixed in this wise, our share of the result of your labour will be fixed in this other wise. So the working population said all right, took up their hammers and went to work. They weret old to work hard and ever harder, and overseers were put to see that they did work hard. But what is this that has come upon us now ? The governing class exclaim, “ Stop ! you have produced too much ; you must lay down your hammers until we require you again ; we have quite enough here of everything to suit us—indeed more than enough. So you can go and shake your heels outside there while we enjoy ourselves and consume the things that you have made.” OVER-POPULATION.—II. The view that attributes our social disorders to the fact that we are overpopulated, is perhaps more widely accepted than any other. The reason for this is because it is an easily understood view. What can be more clear than that, if there be a greater number of people in a commu­ nity than can get employment, and if the livelihood of these people depend upon their getting employment, the privation of those that cannot get employment �8 is due to the fact that there is no room for them in such community ? At one time it was universally believed that the sun moved round the earth ; for what could be more clear than that, if Rome continued to remain in the same spot and the sun every day passed over it, the sun must so move ? Rome, however, did not continue to remain in the same spot; hence what was so very clear was all wrong. Similarly the livelihood of man does not depend upon his getting employment, it depends upon his get­ ting the means of livelihood ; hence what is so very clear as to our being over-populated, may also be all wrong. This is a point, however, that remains for us to consider. The reader has of course heard of Malthus and his celebrated essay on “ Population.” In that essay it was shown that in every community the number of members is limited by the means of subsistence at their command; increase the subsistence and an increased population will result; diminish the subsistence, and there follows a diminished popula­ tion. “ This is incontrovertibly true,” he says. “ Through the animal and vegetable kingdoms, Nature has scattered the seeds of life abroad with the most profuse and liberal hand; but has been comparatively sparing in the room and the nourishment necessary to rear them. The germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in a few thousand years. Necessity, that imperious, all pervading law of nature, restrains them within the prescribed bounds. The race of plants, and the race of animals shrink under this great restrictive law; and man cannot by any efforts of reason escape from it.” Such was the truth that Malthus laboured to enforce—a truth that one would have thought so self-evident as not to need enforcing. His essay, however, is really nothing more than a demonstration of the extraordinary strength of the principle of self- con servation. Malthusians consider themselves followers of Malthus on the ground that they accept and seek to promulgate his views on population. Let us consider for a moment their position. This country, they say, is over-populated. Why I Because there are more people in it wanting work than can get work ; many are con­ sequently compelled to idleness, these not having any other way of procuring the necessaries of life except by labour, are consequently either thrown upon the generosity of their friends or become recipients of public relief, or criminals. In this simple way does the Malthusian explain all our social calamities, and, as the only remedy, he suggests that people must be more prudent, must regulate the number of children they bring into the world—in a word, the population of a country must correspond to the work to be done in that country, the more work the greater the population may be, the less work the less the population. The reader will now see that there is a difference between the view of Malthus and the view of the Malthusian.; the former set up subsistence as the limit to population, the latter sets up employment or work to be done—the more work there is to be done as already remarked, the more room is there for an increased population. Let us now follow the Malthusian position to its logical issue. Why do we call one method of'production or transit an improvement upon another ? Simply because it involves less labour, simply because it abridges labour, and that is the reason that we adopt the improved method. Now, with every abridgment in the labour of making and �9 transferring things there becomes relatively, less and less labour to do, and consequently, the ideal population of the Malthusian becomes less and less. In this way, if the Malthusian position had free play, the most ingenious race, the race that is most apt to discover quicker and quicker methods of doing things, would thereby be always narrowing the limits of its populatiou. It would consequently be the first to disappear from the face of the earth, the fittest to survive would be the most stupid, the unkindest countries would be the most densely populated; in a word, nature and man would be at daggers drawn. We do not say that such is not the case to-day—in fact it is the case. Nature and man are at war, and all through one little fallacy in our economic system. Meanwhile as to our statement that it is the case that nature and man are at daggers drawn, that the stupidest, or least adaptive, are fittest to survive, we have practical proof of this in recent legislative action in America and Australia. Chinese labour was forbid­ den the markets of these countries, because the Chinaman can underbid the Anglo-Saxon. Laws are made to protect the weak against the strong; the strong man m the case just noticed, is the Chinaman, the weak, the Anglo-Saxon, who requires special protection. The fittest will always survive—that statement points to a law that we cannot alter. What we can alter, however, and what we must alter if we would continue our race—if, indeed, we wish to make any further progress at all—are the conditions that make the Chinaman and those that approach him in character the superior. Suppose again, that the Malthusian doctrines were practically adopted and most rigidly carried out. Suppose that to-day our population was so regulated, that there was not an idle man in the kingdom, not a pauper, not even a criminal. Every one is fed, and clad, and legitimately employed. There remains, however, in this happy state of affairs just one thing that we have got to-day, and that is our present industrial system. Let us now take a step forward from this ideal point to a time when improved methods of production and transit have been introduced. Com­ modities can be manufactured with less labour, goods can be conveyed to their destinations with less labour—in a word, we shall suppose, as is really what happens, that in nearly every department of human effort, improvements have been introduced. They are called improvements, because they lessen labour. What then would be the economic effect of a year’s progress upon the ideal state of affairs that we have just been imagining ? The first effect would be that to make the same quantity of manufactures, less workmen would be required ; masters would consequently have to discharge some of their men. Now, what becomes of these men? Well, they do not want to be discharged, so they offer their services at a lower wage, competition amongst the work­ men for such employment as there is to be had becomes keener, wages consequently become lower, for masters are obliged to follow the market rate of wages. No matter, however, whether wages be high or low, the masters cannot employ as many men as they did before the introduction of the supposed improvements. What, then, becomes of the surplus ? Why, enforced idleness, and with it loss of independence : then as wc go on improving, we recruit the ranks of the enforced idlers—they are enforced idlers at first—and out of them springs the necessity for those vigorous institutions police courts, prisons, and workhouses. �IO The Malthusian would thus have to resort periodically to some drastic measures to restore the balance between employment and population. One word more in connexion with improvements. We have seen their effect to be the lessening the nurhber of those employed and the lowering of wages. Now here comes the economic effect par excellence. Fewer men in employment at reduced wages means a diminution in the power of the community to consume. Improved methods of production, &c., are ever increasing our power over nature, our power to produce ; they are at the same time, by rendering competition amongst labourers keener and keener, diminishing our power to consume. This is going on all over the world, is operating upon the industrial classes in every civilised community, is the noose with which we are stranglingourselves, is in the words of Carlyle, “ the accursed invisible night-mare that is crushing out the life of us and ours.” Can anyone wonder that the markets of the world are glutted ? The supply pipes are ever widening, the waste pipes ever contracting: of course, there is a running over ; of course, as Carlyle says, our wealth “i s an enchanted wealth.” THE REMEDY.—III. The 'main evils that result from our present economic svrstem have appeared from our observations on over-production and over-population. Over-production and over-population are themselves under existing arrangements sources of great suffering. Both, curiously enough, too, exist together. This in itself shews that there must be some contradic­ tory forces in operation in the industrial world ; for is it not ridiculous that we should have too large a population while we are complaining of having too great an abundance of useful things? How are we to tell when a population is great or small ? By a reference to the limit of population. Now the limit to population is professed to be the means of subsistence. But our population is so far from pressing upon this limit that we are complaining of a too abundant supply of the means of subsistence. Here then is an absurdity; and we are landed in this absurdity because the limit to population is not as supposed, the means of subsistence, but the employment offered in a community. By referring to this limit, the employment offered in a community, we find that our population is too great; for there are many more than can get employ­ ment, and by so many is our population excessive. Now, it remains for us to ask ourselves whether we are to maintain this limiting principle, or whether it would not be better for us to adopt another. We have already shewn that it is impossible to have population regu­ lated by the employment to be had in a community because such em­ ployment is always varying, is by the introduction of improved methods of production always becoming less and less. Now, here is a fertile source of evil; for with every contraction of the field of employment some are thrust out of that field, these keep on recruiting the everlasting army of paupers and criminals, and form the dregs of society. They are forced into these positions, and no subsequent action on the part of society is of any avail in recalling them. There is the field of labour, it is full; �11 place another man in it, it is more than full; the consequence is that either that man or some one else must go out. Besides paupers and criminals, and what are called the dregs of society, such a limiting principle to population leads in its working out to deterioration in workmanship, and indeed in human character. As already shown, improvements by lessening the demand for labour lead to a keener competition amongst labourers, and thereby lead to a con­ traction of the labourers’ pockets ; to meet this diminished consuming power commodities have to be made as cheaply as possible ; there is no effective demand for good materials, consequently jerrymaundering is in the ascendant. As to the deterioration in human character that is con­ tinually going on, we have already shown what class is best fitted to survive. It is the class that can live on least, whose manner of living approaches more and more closely to the beasts. Thus is our civilisa­ tion being undermined, and thus are all our attempts at social progress frustrated. It is apparent, then, that some other limit to population must be substituted for the one that prevails to-day, and it is. such other limit that we now proceed to unfold. This other limit is the means of subsistence—the very limit that is supposed to be in operation, but which we have shown to be not the case. Now, in the first place, with such a limit as the means of subsist­ ence over-population would be impossible; for no community could ever consist of more members than it could support. This, of course, is evi­ dent, and requires no further elucidation. In speaking of the limiting principle that is in operation now, viz., employment, we objected to it that it was always varying. Might not the means of subsistence vary too ? If, moreover, at any time, writh the means of subsistence as the limit to population there should become less subsistence than will suffice to maintain the whole population, who is to have such subsistence and who is to go without ? Of course the means of subsistence might vary; the difficulties that might arise from such a possibility will, however, disappear after we have shown how this limit is to be practically adopted, and this brings us to enquire into the nature of property. What is property ? Why does society have such a thing as property at all ? Why should it put itself about to ensure any man in the pos­ session of whatever goods he may have got hold of? The only reason that can be given for this, and a very gocd one it is, is to encourage industry. For instance, I make chairs ; suppose that as soon as I have done so a stronger man than myself comes along and takes them from me; I should most certainly come to the conclusion to make no more chairs, because I would derive no benefit from pursuing such a course, and would at once betake myself to procuring whatever I wanted by stealing also. Of course, there would very soon be nothing to steal, and society would at once collapse. To prevent this collapse, however, and to preserve its own life, society steps forward and says that these chairs are mine, that they are mine because I made them ; the reason that such a course of conduct on the part of society preserves its life is because I am .thereby encouraged to go on making more chairs, and every other maker of everything else is encouraged in the same way. Thus are the members of the community kept supplied with such commodities as are required. The institution of private property, then, is maintained by society �T2 for the sake of encouraging industry, and for the sake of nothing else, except what is implied in the encouragement of industry — viz., the continuance of society. Such, then, is the reason why we have such a thing as property. How far does society practically adhere to this, the. recognised theory of property ? It has departed from it as far as it can. To see that this is so, the merest glance round is sufficient; for those that have made everything have got nothing. As soon as an article has been made it is by some magical operation—an operation so subtle that it is scarce perceptible —snatched from the maker, and becomes the property of some one else. Speaking in this connection John Stuart Mill says that he would prefer Communism itself to such an unholy state of affairs. “ If,” he says, “ the institution of private property necessarily carried with it as a con­ sequence that the produce of labour should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labour—the largest portions to those who have never worked at all, the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so, in a descending scale, the remuneration dwind­ ling as the work grows harder aud more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on being able to earn even the necessaries of life: if this, or communism were the alternative, ail the difficulties, great or small, of communism would be but as dust in the balance.” Surely it cannot be impossible for society to carry out so simple a theory—a theory that it recognises and accepts as true—as to see that people have the produce of their own labour, that industry is rewarded and encouraged. The grossest inconsistency on the part of society as regards property is the maintenance of property in. land. How can that encourage in­ dustry ? It is only the produce of the land, the result of labour, that can be called property. By insuring to this individual or to that individual this or that tract of land, what industry does society encourage ? It en­ courages the industry of the idle—a terrible industry, a scourge: it reduces thousands of its members to the position of flunkeys, ministers to idleness. As we have already said, the view that property is maintained in a community for the purpose of encouraging industry and for no other pur­ pose, is not new neither is it denied. All that it implies is that men are to be rewarded according to their industry—this, no one can for a mo­ ment deny, is far from being practically carried out; in fact, we practically carry out the very opposite doctrine. Here then are two principles, viz.: that population is limited by subsistence and that property is instituted to encourage industry ; that are universally accepted and argued upon, as if they were carried into practice ; we have shown that the one not carried into practice, how­ ever, seeks to deny them. Why should they not be adopted by society ? It is the adoption of these two principles, and of these two principles alone that is recommended here. Indeed by seeing that the theory of property alone is applied, the limiting principle to population will be implicitly applied too. Such, and such alone, is the work that lies before reformers now. 'AXVV • wy""........... •''WXxxxax" �OBJECT. The Establishment of a Free Condition of Society based on the prin­ ciple of Political Equality, with Equal Social Rights for all and the complete Emancipation of Labour. PROGRAMME. 1. All Officers or Administrators to be elected by Equal Direct Adult Suffrage, and to be paid by the Community. 2. Legislation by the People, in such wise that no project of Law shall become legally binding till accepted by the Majority of the People. 3. The Abolition of a Standing Army, and the Establishment of a National Citizen Force ; the People to decide on Peace or War. 4. All Education, higher no less than elementary, to be Free, Com­ pulsory, Secular, and Industrial for all alike. 5. The Administration of Justice to be Free and Gratuitous for all Members of Society. 6. The Land with all the Mines, Railways and other Means of Tran­ sit, to be declared and treated as Collective or Common Property. 7. Ireland and all other parts of the Empire to have Legislative Independence. 8. The Production of Wealth to be regulated by Society in the com­ mon interest of all its Members. 9. The Means of Production, Distribution and Exchange to be declared and treated as Collective or Common Property. As measures called for to palliate the evils of our existing society the Social-Democratic Federation urges for immediate adoption :— The Compulsory Construction of healthy artizan’s and agricultural labourers’ dwellings in proportion to the population, such dwellings to be let at rents to cover the cost of construction and maintenance alone. Free Compulsory Education for all classes, together with the provision of at least one wholesome meal a day in each school. Eight Hours or less to be the normal working day in all trades. Cumulative Taxation upon all incomes above a fixed minimum not exceeding /300 a year. State Appropriation of Railways, with or without compensation. The establishment of National Banks, which shall absorb all private institutions that derive a profit from operations in money or credit. Rapid Extinction of the National Debt. Nationalisation of the Land, and organisation of agricultural and industrial armies under State control on Co-operative principles. 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For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. 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Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The industrial problem solved Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Robertson, W.B. Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 12, [4] p. ; 23 cm. Notes: Stamp on title page: South Place Chapel Finsbury, Lending Library. Publisher's list and Information on the Social-Democratic Federation on unnumbered pages at the end. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G4973 Subject The topic of the resource Industry Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The industrial problem solved), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Economics Industrial Democracy Industrialization Population Increase Production Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/62e966be2e8a7fb66ccb935d42dc8a9f.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=HOyfIF0GChFr9pVuKztdpMnEaO7eTyPgmDIDINwI%7EFnVXjM-56pfeTGxwWcOzvRNJpCK7y25WTbJCr%7EGWrr0H4sh1DJAeOilNn7oCFSmUw-R1KLfftHXMazZlTSXH20ORbzr7Pyyv3DX9mXA7wXReztOURLMED6aXJgLfbYKnmU788meK3t0EzsqLA8CluMBj2gx4Ia4gz8ueiYxDUTeVKfmshCx-okpXa3Bw6Wod-COv2fsh-rX53pctWybJo8uRmkXucPJgKwjA1VXYc3qaKqytrUo66zq%7E0CXvX8EwirWAl6OayN1rmf3mVJSXjZKAzobjpOvI5jqB7ahp9XhTA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8a48984ad0fda6268a197945b685dd4e PDF Text Text Price One Penny. NOW SUFFFRING FIVE YEARS* IMPRISONMENT UNDER THE FRENCH REPUBLIC FOR ADVOCATING THE CAUSE OF THE PEOPLE. Translated by H. M. Hyndman. Reprinted from “TO-DAY" (Monthly 3d.). 1885. Published at The Modern Press, 13, Paternoster Row, E.C. T T is to the young that I wish to address myself to-day. Let the -L old—I mean of course the old in heart and mind—lay the pamphlet down therefore without tiring their eyes in reading what will tell them nothing. I assume that you are about eighteen or twenty years of age ; that you have finished your apprenticeship or your studies; that you are just entering on life. I take it for granted that you have a mind free from the superstition which your teachers have sought to force upon you ; that you don’t fear the devil and that you do not go to hear parsons and ministers rant. More, that you are not one of the fops, sad products of a society in decay, who display their well-cut trousers and their monkey faces in the park and who even at their early age have only an insatiable longing for pleasure at any price. ... I assume on the contrary that you have a warm heart and for this reason I talk to you. A first question, I know, occurs to you—you have often asked yourself—“ What am I going to be ? ” In fact when a man is young he understands that after having studied a trade or a science for several years—at the cost of society, mark—he has not done this in order that he should make use of his acquirements as instru­ ments of plunder for his own gain, and he must be depraved indeed and utterly cankered by vice, who has not dreamed that one day he would apply his intelligence, his abilities, his knowledge to help on the enfranchisement of those who to-day grovel in misery and in ignorance. You are one of those who has had such a vision, are you not ? Very well, let us see what you must do to make your dream a reality. I do not know in what rank you were born. Perhaps, favoured �2 by fortune, you have turned your attention to the study of science; you are to be a doctor, a barrister, a man of letters, or a scientific man ; a wide field opens up before you ; you enter upon life with extensive knowledge, with a trained intelligence ; or, on the other hand, you are, perhaps, only an honest artisan whose knowledge of science is limited by the little that you have learnt at school; but you have had the advantage of learning at first hand what a life of exhausting toil is the lot of the worker of our time. I stop at the first supposition, to return afterwards to the second ", I assume then that you have received a scientific education. Let us suppose that you intend to be a—doctor. To-morrow a man in corduroys will come to fetch you to see a sick woman. He will lead you into one of those alleys where the opposite neighbours can almost shake hands over the heads of the passers-by ; you ascend into a foul atmosphere by the flickering light of a little ill-trimmed lamp ; you climb two, three, four, five flights of filthy stairs and in a dark, cold room you find the sick woman, lying on a pallet covered with dirty rags. Pale, livid children, shivering under their scanty garments, gaze at you with their big eyes wide open. The husband has worked all his life twelve or thirteen hours a-day at no matter what; now he has been out of work for three months. To be out of employ is not rare in his trade; it happens every year, periodically; but, formerly, when he was out of work his wife went out as a char­ woman—perhaps to wash your shirts—at the rate of fifteen-pence a-day ; but now she has been bedridden for two months and misery glares upon the family in all its squalid hideousness. What will you prescribe for the sick woman, doctor ? you who have seen at a glance that the cause of her illness is general anaemia, want of good food, lack of fresh air ? Say a good beef­ steak every day ? a little exercise in the country ? a dry and wellventilated bed-room ? What irony ! If she could have afforded it this would have all have been done long since without waiting for your advice I If you have a good heart, a frank address, an honest face, the family will tell you many things. They will tell you that the woman on the other side of the partition, who coughs a cough which tears your heart, is a poor ironer; that a flight of stairs lower down all the children have the fever ; that the washerwoman who occu­ pies the ground floor will not live to see the spring, and that in the house next door things are still worse. What will you say to all these sick people ? Recommend them generous diet, change of air, less exhausting toil. . . . You only wish you could, but you daren’t, and you go out heartbroken with a curse on your lips. The next day, as you still brood over the fate of the dwellers in this dog-hutch, your partner tells you that yesterday a footman came to fetch him, this time in a carriage. It was for the owner of a fine house, for a lady worn out with sleepless nights, who devotes all her life to dressing, visits, balls, and squabbles with a stupid husband. Your friend has prescribed for her a less preposterous habit of life, a less heating diet, walks in the fresh air, an even temperament and, in order to make up in some measure for the want of useful work, a little gymnastic exercise in her bedroom. �3 The one is dying because she has never had enough food nor enough rest in her whole life ; the other pines because she has never known what work is since she was born. If you are one of those miserable natures who adapt themselves to anything, who at the sight of the most revolting spectacles console themselves with a gentle sigh and a glass of sherry, then you will gradually become used to these contrasts and the nature of the beast favouring your endeavours, your sole idea will be to lift yourself into the ranks of the pleasure-seekers, so that you may never again find yourself among the wretched. But if you are a Man, if every sentiment is translated in your case into an action of the will, if, in you, the beast has not crushed the intelligent being, then you will return home one day saying to yourself, “ No, it is unjust; this must not go on so any longer. It is not enough to cure diseases, we must prevent them. A little good living and intellectual development would score off our lists half the patients and half the diseases. Throw physic to the dogs! Air, good diet, less crushing toil,—that is how we must begin. Without this, the whole profession of a doctor is nothing but trickery and humbug.” That very day you will understand Socialism. You will wish to know it thoroughly and if altruism is not a word devoid of significance for you, if you apply to the study of the social question the rigid induction of the natural philosopher you will end by finding yourself in our ranks, and you will work, as we work, to bring about the Social Revolution. But perhaps you will say, “ Mere practical business may go to the devil! I will devote myself to pure science ; I will be an astronomer, a physiologist, a chemist. Such work a 5 that always bears fruit, if only for future generations.” Let us first try to understand what you seek in devoting your­ self to science. Is it only the pleasure—doubtless immense— which we derive from the study of nature and the exercise of our intellectual faculties ? In that case I ask you in what respect does the philosopher, who pursues science in order that he may pass his life pleasantly to himself, differ from that drunkard there, who only seeks for the immediate gratification that gin affords him ? The philosopher has, past all question, chosen his enjoyment more wisely, since it affords him a pleasure far deeper and more lasting than that of the toper. But that is all! Both one and the other have the same selfish end in view, personal gratification. But no, you have no wish to lead this selfish life. By working at science you mean to work for humanity, and that is the idea which will guide you in your investigations. A charming illusion ! Which of us has not hugged it for a moment when giving himself up for the first time to science ? But then, if you are really thinking about humanity, if you look to the good of mankind in your studies, a formidable objection rises before you ; for, however little you may have of the critical spirit, you must at once note that in dur society of to-day science is only an appendage to luxury which serves to render life pleasanter for the few, but remains absolutely inaccessible to the bulk of mankind. �4 Now more than a century has passed since science laid down sound propositions as to the origin of the universe, but how many have mastered them or possess the really scientific spirit of criticism ? A few thousands at the outside, who are lost in the midst of hundreds of millions still steeped in prejudices and super­ stitions worthy of savages, who are consequently ever ready to serve as puppets for religious impostors. Or, to go a step further, let us glance at what science has done to establish rational foundations for physical and moral health. Science tells us how we ought to live in order to preserve the health q£ our own bodies, how to maintain in good conditions of existence the crowded masses of our population. But does not all the vast amount of work done in these two directions remain a dead letter in our books ? We know it does. And why ?—Because science to-day exists only for a handful of privileged persons, because social inequality which divides society into two classes—the wage­ slaves and the grabbers of capital—renders all its teachings as to the conditions of a rational existence only the bitterest irony to nine-tenths of mankind. I could give plenty more examples, but I stop short : only go outside Faust’s closet, whose windows, darkened by dust, scarce let the light of heaven glimmer on its shelves full of books, look round, and at each step you will find fresh proof in support of this view. It is now no longer a question of accumulating scientific truths and discoveries. We need above everything to spread the truths already mastered by science, to make them part of our daily life, to render them common property. We have to order things so that all, so that the mass of mankind, may be capable of understand­ ing and applying them ; we have to make science no longer a luxury but the foundation of every man’s life. This is what justice demands. I go farther: I say that the interests of science itself lie m the same direction. Science only makes real progress when a new truth finds a soil already prepared to receive it. The theory of the mechanical origin of heat, though enunciated in the last century in the same terms that Hirn and Clausius formulate it to-day, re­ mained for eighty years buried in the Academical Records until such time as knowledge of physics had spread widely enough to create a public capable of accepting it. Three generations had to go by before the ideas of Erasmus Darwin on the variation ot species could be favourably received from his grandson, and that they should be admitted by academical philosophers, not without pressure from public opinion even then. The philosopher, like the poet or artist, is always the product of the society m which he moves and teaches. ... , , But, if you are imbued with these ideas, you will understand that it is above all important to bring about a radical change in this state of affairs, which to-day condemns the philosopher to be crammed with scientific truths, and almost the whole of the rest of human beings to remain what they were five, ten centuries ago, that is to say in the state of slaves and machines, incapable ot mastering established truths. And the day when you are imbued with wide, deep, humane and profoundly scientific trutn, tha ay you will lose your taste for pure science. You will set to work to �5 find out the means to effect this transformation, and if you bring to your investigations the impartiality which has guided you in your Scientific researches you will of necessity adopt the cause of Socialism ; you will make an end of sophisms and you will come amongst us ; weary of working to procure pleasures for this small group, which already has such a large share of them, you will place your information and your devotion at the service of the oppressed. And be sure that then the feeling of duty accomplished, and of a real accord established between your sentiments and your actions, you will find powers in yourself of whose existence you »ever even dreamed. When, too, one day—it is not far distant in any case, saving the presence of our professors—when one day, I say, the change for which you are working shall have been brought about, then, deriving new forces from collective scientific work, and from the powerful help of armies of labourers who will come to place their energies at its service, science will take a new bound forward, in comparison with which the slow progress of to-day will appear the simple exercises of tyros. Then you will enjoy science ; that pleasure will be a pleasure for all. If you have finished reading law and are about to be called to the Bar, perhaps you too have some illusions as to your future activity—I assume that you are one of the nobler spirits, that you know what altruism means. Perhaps you think “ To devote my life to an unceasing and vigorous struggle against all injustice ! To apply my whole faculties to bringing about the triumph of law, the public expression of supreme justice—can any career be nobler? ” and you begin the real work of life confident in yourself and in the profession you have chosen. Very well: let us turn to any page of the Law Reports and see what actual life will tell you. Here we have a rich landowner; he demands the eviction of a cottier tenant who has not paid his rent. From the legal point of view the case is beyond dispute ; since the poor farmer can’t pay, out he must go. But if we look into the facts we shall learn some­ thing like this. The landlord has squandered his rents persistently in rollicking pleasure; the tenant has worked hard all day and ■every day. The landlord has done nothing to improve his estate, nevertheless its value has trebled in fifty years owing to the rise in price of land due to the construction of a railway, to the making of new highroads, to the draining of a marsh, to the enclosure and cultivation of waste lands; but the tenant who has contributed largely towards this increase has ruined himself; he fell into the hands of usurers and, head over ears in debt, he can no longer pay the landlord. The law, always on the side of property, is quite clear : the landlord is in the right. But you, whose feeling of justice has not yet been stifled by legal fictions, what will you do ? Will you contend that the farmer ought to be turned out upon the high road ?—for that is what the law ordains—or will you urge that the landlord should pay back to the farmer the whole of the increase of value in his property which is due to the farmer’s labour ?—this is what equity decrees. Which side will you take ? for the law and against justice ? or for justice and against the law? �W" 6 Or when workmen have gone out on strike against a master without notice, which side will you take then ? The side of the law, that is to say the part of the master who, taking advantage of a period of crisis, has made outrageous profits ? or against the law, but on the side of the workers who received during the whole time only 2s. a day as wages, and saw their wives and children fade away before their eyes? Will you stand up for that piece of chicanery which consists in affirming “ freedom of contract ” ? Or will you uphold equity, according to which a contract entered into between a man who has dined well and the man who sells his labour for bare subsistence, between the strong and the weak, is not a contract. Take another case. Here in London a man was loitering near a butcher’s shop. He stole a beefsteak and ran off with it. Arrested and questioned, it turns out that he is an artisan out of work, and that he and his family have had nothing to eat for four days. The butcher is asked to let the man off, but he is all for the triumph of justice ! He prosecutes, and the man is sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. Blind Themis so wills it! Does not your conscience revolt against the law and against society when you hear similar judgments pronounced every day ? Or again, will you call for the enforcement of the law against this man who, badly brought up and ill-used from his childhood, has arrived at man’s estate without having heard one sympathetic word, and completes his career by murdering his neighbour in order to rob him of a shilling ? Will you demand his execution, or—worse still—that he should be imprisoned for twenty years, when you know very well that he is rather a madman than a criminal, and, in any case, that his crime is the fault of our entire society ? Will you claim that these weavers should be thrown into prison who in a moment of desperation have set fire to a mill ? That this man who shot at a crowned murderer should be imprisoned for life ? That these insurgents should be shot down who plant the flag of the future on the barricades ?—no, a thousand times no ! If you reason instead of repeating what is taught you; if you analyse the law and strip off those cloudy fictions with which it has been draped in order to conceal its real origin, which is the right of the stronger, and its substance, which has ever been the consecration of all the tyrannies handed down to mankind through its long and bloody history; when you have comprehended this, your contempt for the law will be profound indeed. You will understand that to remain the servant of the written law is to place yourself every day in opposition to the law of conscience, and to make a bargain on the wrong side ; and since this struggle cannot go on for ever you will either silence your conscience and become a scoundrel, or you will break with tradition, and you will work with us for the utter destruction of all this injustice, economical, social, and political. But then you will be a Socialist, you will be a Revolutionist. . And you, young engineer, you who dream of improving the lot of the workers by the application of science to industry,—what a sad disappointment, what terrible disillusions await you ! You devote the youthful energy of your mind to working out the scheme �7 of a railway which, running along the brink of precipices anti burrowing into the very heart of mountains of granite, will bind, together two countries which nature has separated. But, once at work, you see whole regiments of workers decimated by privations and sickness in this dark tunnel, you see others of them returning home carrying with them may be a few pence and the undoubted seeds of consumption, you see human corpses—the results of a grovelling greed—as landmarks along each yard of your road, and, when the railway is finished, you see lastly that it becomes the highway for the artillery of an invading army. . . . You have given up the prime of your youth to perfect an in­ vention which will facilitate production, and, after many experi­ ments, many sleepless nights, you are at length master of this valuable discovery. You make use of it and the result surpasses your expectations. Ten, twenty thousand men are thrown out upon the streets ! Those who remain, most of them children, will be reduced to mere machines I Three, four, ten masters will make their fortunes and will drink deep on the strength of it. . . . Is this your dream ? . , , , .u <Finally, you study recent industrial advances and you see that the sempstress has gained nothing, absolutely nothing, by the in­ vention of the sewing machine; that the labourer m the bt. Gothard tunnel dies of ankylostoma, notwithstanding diamond drills • that the mason and the day labourer are out of work just as before at the foot of the Giffard lifts—and, if you discuss social problems with the same independence of spirit which has guided you in your mechanical investigations, you necessarily come to the conclusion that under the domination of private property and wage-slavery, every new invention, far from increasing the well­ being of the worker, only makes his slavery heavier, his labour more degrading, the periods of slack work more frequent, the crisis sharper, and that the man who already has every conceivable pleasure for himself is the only one who profits by it. . What will you do when you have once come to this conclusion . —either you will begin by silencing your conscience by sophisms ; then one fine day you will bid farewell to the honest dreams of your youth and you will try to obtain, for yourself, what commands pleasure and enjoyment—you will then go over into the camp of the exploiters. Or if you have a tender heart, you will say to yourself “ No, this is not the time for inventions. Let us work first to transform the domain of production ; when private property is put an end to, then each new advance in industry will be made for the benefit of all mankind ; and this mass of workers, mere machines as they are to-day, will then become thinking beings who apply to industry their intelligence, strengthened by study and skilled in manual labour, and thus mechanical progress will take a bound forward which will carry out in fifty years what nowa­ days we cannot even dream of. And what shall I say to the schoolmaster—not to the man who looks upon his profession as a wearisome business, but to him who when surrounded by a joyous band of young pickles feels exhilarated by their cheery looks, and in the midst of their happy laughter,and who tries to plant in their little heads those ideas of humanity which he cherished himself when he was young. �8 Often I see that you are sad and I know what it is that makes you knit your brows. This very day, your favourite pupil, who is not very well up in Latin it is true, but who has none the less an excellent heart, recited the story of William Tell with so much vigour! his eyes sparkled, he seemed to wish to stab all tyrants there and then ; he gave with such fire the passionate lines of Schiller:— Before the slave when he breaks his chain, Before the free man tremble not. But when he returned home, his mother, his father, his uncle, sharply rebuked him for want of respect to the minister or the rural policeman ; they held forth to him by the hour on “ prudence, respect for authority, submission to his betters ”, till he put Schiller aside in order to read “ Self-Help.” And then only yesterday you were told that your best pupils have all turned out badly ; the one does nothing but dream of becoming an officer ; another in league with his master robs the workers of their slender wages ; and you, who had such hopes of these young­ people, you now brood over the sad contrast between your ideal and life as it is. You still brood over it ! then I foresee that in two years at the outside, after having suffered disappointment after disappointment, you will lay your favourite authors on the shelf, and you will end by saying that Tell was no doubt a very honest fellow, but after all a trifle cracked, that poetry is a first-rate thing for the fireside, especially when a man has been teaching the rule-of-three all day long, but still poets are always in the clouds and their views have nothing to do with the life of to-day, nor with the next visit of the Inspector of Schools. . . . Or, on the other hand, the dreams of your youth will become the firm convictions of your mature age. You will wish to have wide, human education for all, in school and out of school; and, seeing that this is impossible in existing conditions, you will attack the very foundations of bourgeois society. Then, discharged, as you will be by the Education Department, you will leave your school and come among us and be of us; you will tell men of riper years but of smaller attainments than yourself, how enticing knowledge is, what mankind ought to be, nay what we could be. You will come and work with Socialists for the complete trans­ formation of the existing system, will strive side by side with us to attain true equality, real fraternity, never-ending liberty for the world. Lastly you, young artist, sculptor, painter, poet, musician, do you not observe that the sacred fire which inspired your prede­ cessors is wanting in the men of to-day ? that art is commonplace and mediocrity reigns supreme ? Could it be otherwise ? The delight of having re-discovered the ancient world, of having bathed afresh in the springs of nature which created the master-pieces of the Renaissance no longer exists for the art of our time ; the revolutionary ideal has left it cold until now, and, failing an ideal, our art fancies that it has found one in realism when it painfully photographs in colours the dewdrop on the leaf of a plan# imitates the muscles in the leg of a �9 eow, or describes minutely in prose and in verse the suffocating filth of a sewer, the boudoir of a whore of high degree. “ But, if this is so, what is to be done ? ” you say.—If, I reply, the sacred fire that you say you possess is nothi ng better than a smoking wick, then you will go on doing as you have done, and your art will speedily degenerate into the trade of decorator of tradesmen’s shops, of a purveyor of libretti to third-rate operettas and tales for Christmas Annuals—most of you are already running down that grade with a fine head of steam on. .... But, if your heart really beats in unison with that of humanity, if like a true poet you have an ear for Life, then, gazing out upon this sea of sorrow whose tide sweeps up around you, face to face with these people dying of hunger, in the presence of these corpses piled up in the mines, and these mutilated bodies lying in heaps on the barricades, looking on these long lines of exiles who are going to bury themselves in the snows of Siberia and in the marshes of tropical islands, in full view of this desperate battle which is being fought, amid the cries of pain from the conquered and the orgies of the victors, of heroism in conflict with cowardice, of noble determination and contemptible cunning—you cannot re­ main neutral: you will come and take the side of the oppressed because you know that the beautiful, the sublime, the spirit of life itself are on the side of those who fight for light, for humanity, for justice! You stop me at last! “ What the devil!” you say. “ But if abstract science is a luxury and the practice of medicine mere chicane ; if law spells injustice and mechanical invention is but a means of robbery; if the school, at variance with the wisdom of the practical man,” is sure to be overcome, and art without the revolutionary idea can only de­ generate, what remains for me to do ?” Well, I will tell you. A vast and most enthralling task ; a work in which your actions will be in complete harmony with your conscience, an undertaking capable of rousing the noblest and most vigorous natures. What work ?—I will now tell you. It rests with you either to palter continually with your con­ science, and in the end to say one fine day “ Perish humanity, provided I can have plenty of pleasures and enjoy them to the full, so long as the people are foolish enough to let me.” Or, once more the inevitable alternative, to take part with the Socialists and work with them for the complete transformation of society. Such is the irrefragable consequence of the analysis we have gone through. That is the logical conclusion which every intelligent man must perforce arrive at, provided that he reasons honestly about what passes around him, and discards the sophisms which his bourgeois education and the interested views of those about him whisper in his ear. This conclusion once arrived at, the question, “ What is to be done ?” is naturally put. The answer is easy. Leave this environment in which you are placed and where it is the fashion to say that the people are nothing but a lot of brutes, Come among these people—and the answer will come of itself. �IO You will see that everywhere, in England as well as in France, in Germany as well as in Italy, in Russia as well as in the United States, everywhere where there is a privileged and an oppressed class, there is a tremendous work going on in the midst of the working-class, whose object is to break down for ever the slavery enforced by the capitalist feudality and to lay the foundation of a. society established on the basis of justice and equality. It is no longer enough for the man of the people to-day to pour forth his complaints in one of these songs whose melody breaks your heart, such as were sung by the serfs of the eighteenth century and are still sung by the Slav peasant; he labours with his fellow-toilers for his enfranchisement, with the knowledge of what he is doing and against every obstacle put in his way. His thoughts are constantly exercised in considering what should be done in order that life, instead of being a curse for threefourths of mankind, may be a real enjoyment for all. He takes up the hardest problems of sociology and tries to solve them by his good sense, his spirit of observation, his hard experience. In order to come to an understanding with others as miserable as himself, he seeks to form groups, to organise. He forms societies, main­ tained with difficulty by small contributions ; he tries to make terms with his fellows beyond the frontier, and he prepares the day when wars between peoples shall be impossible far better than the frothy philanthropists who now potter with the fad of universal peace. In order to know what his brothers are doing, to have a closer connection with them, to elaborate his ideas and pass them round, he maintains—but at the price of what privations, what ceaseless efforts!—his working press. At length when the hour has come he rises, and reddening the pavements and the barricades with his blood, he bounds forward to conquer those liberties which the rich and powerful will afterwards know how to corrupt and to turn against him again. What an unending series of efforts ! what an incessant struggle ! What a toil perpetually begun afresh; sometimes to fill up the gaps occasioned by desertion—the result of weariness, corruption, prosecutions ; sometimes to rally the broken forces decimated by fusillades and cold-blooded butchery I at another time to recom­ mence the studies sternly broken off by wholesale slaughter. The newspapers are set on foot by men who have been obliged to force from society scraps of knowledge by depriving themselves of sleep and food ; the agitation is kept up by halfpence deducted from the amount needed to get the barest necessaries of life ; and all this under the constant dread of seeing his family reduced to the most fearful misery, as soon as the master learns that “ his workman, his slave, is tainted with Socialism.” This is what you will see if you go among the people._ And in this endless struggle how often has not the toiler vainly asked, as he stumbled under the weight of his burden : “ Where, TAUGHT AT then, are these OUR EXPENSE ? young THESE CLOTHED WHILE THEY STUDIED ? people who have YOUTHS WHOM WE FED been AND WHERE ARE THOSE FOR WHOM, �II OUR BENT BACKS DOUBLE BENEATH BURDENS OUR OUR AND BELLIES EMPTY, WE HAVE BUILT THESE HOUSES, THESE COLLEGES, THESE LECTURE-ROOMS, THESE MUSEUMS ? FOR WHOSE BENEFIT PRINTED THESE read ? Where POSSESS ITSELF IS THE WITH WE, FINE are OUR BOOKS, MOST they, SCIENCE NOT WORTH OF these WORN FACES, HAVE WE CANNOT OF WHICH professors MANKIND, AND A RARE WHERE ARE THE MEN PALE, WHOM FOR MEN WHO ARE EVER SPEAKING IN PRAISE OF LIBERTY, THINK TO CHAMPION OUR BENEATH THEIR FEET ? FREEDOM, TRAMPLED AS WHERE THE WHOLE WITH TEARS FIND GANG IN OF THEIR THEMSELVES HYPOCRITES WHO EYES BUT WHO AMONG US HELPING ARE THE AND NEVER IT IS EACH DAY ARE THEY, THESE POETS, THESE PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS? to HUMANITY WHERE CATERPILLAR ? EVEN claim who WRITERS AND WHERE IN A WORD IS SPEAK OF NEVER, BY US IN THE PEOPLE ANY CHANCE, OUR LABORIOUS WORK ?” Where are they, indeed ? Why, some are taking their ease with the most cowardly in­ difference; others, the majority, despise the “dirty mob,” and are ready to pounce upon them if they dare touch one of their privileges. Now and then, it is true, a young man comes among us who* dreams of drums and barricades, and seeks sensational scenes; but he deserts the cause of the people as soon as he perceives that the road to the barricade is long, that the work is heavy, and that the crowns of laurel to be won in this campaign are inter­ mingled with thorns. Generally these are ambitious schemers out of work, who having failed in their first efforts, try in this way to cajole people out of their votes, but who a little later will be the first to denounce them, when the people wish to apply the principles which they themselves have professed ; perhaps will even be ready to turn artillery and Gatlings upon them if they dare to move before they, the heads of the movement, give the signal. Add mean insult, haughty contempt, cowardly calumny from the great majority, and you know what the people may expect now-a-days from most of the youth of the upper and middle classes in the way of help towards the social evolution. But then you ask, “ What shall we do ? ” When there is every­ thing to be done I When a whole army of young people would find plenty to employ the entire vigour of their youthful energy, the full force of their intelligence and their talents to help the people in the vast enterprise they have undertaken 1 What shall we do ? Listen. You lovers of pure science, if you are imbued with the principles of Socialism, if you have understood the real meaning of the revo­ lution which is even now knocking at the door, don’t you see that all science has to be recast in order to place it in harmony with the new principles; that it is your business to accomplish in this field �12 ;, a revolution far greater than that which was accomplisnea m every branch of science during the eighteenth century ? Don’t you under­ stand that history—which to-day is an old wife’s tale about great kings, great statesinen and great parliaments—that history itself has to be written from the point of view of the people, from the point of view of work done by the masses in the long evolutions of mankind ? That social economy—which to-day is merely the sanctification of capitalist robbery—has to be worked out afresh as well in its fundamental principles as in its innumerable applica­ tions ? That anthropology, sociology, ethics must be completely recast, and that the very natural sciences themselves, regarded from another point of view, must undergo a profound modification, alike in regard to the conception of natural phenomena and with respect to the method of exposition. Very well, then. Set to work I Place your abilities at the com­ mand of the good cause. Especially help us with your clear logic to combat prejudice and to lay by your synthesis the foundations of a better organisation ; yet more, teach us to apply in our daily arguments the fearlessness of true scientific investigation, and show us, as your predecessors did, how men dare sacrifice even life itself for the triumph of the truth. You, doctors, who have learnt Socialism by a bitter experience, never weary of telling us to-day, to-morrow, in season and out of season, that humanity itself hurries onward to decay if men remain in the present conditions of existence and of work ; that all your medicaments must be powerless against disease while the majority of mankind vegetate in conditions absolutely contrary to those which science tells us are healthful; that it is the causes of disease which must be uprooted, and what is necessary to remove them. Come with your scalpel and dissect for us with an unerring hand this society of ours hastening to putrefaction. Tell us what a rational existence should and might be. Insist, as true surgeons, that a gangrenous limb must be amputated when it may poison the whole body. You, who have worked at the application of science to industry, come and tell us frankly what has been the outcome of your dis­ coveries. Convince those who dare not march boldly towards the future, what new inventions the knowledge we have already acquired carries in its womb, what industry could do under better conditions, what man might easily produce if he produced always with a view to enhance his own production. You poets, painters, sculptors, musicians, if you understand your true mission and the very interests of art itseli, come with us. Place your pen, your pencil, your chisel, your ideas at the service of the revolution. Figure forth to us, in your eloquent style or your impressive pictures, the heroic struggles of the people against their oppressors ; fire the hearts of our youth with that glorious revolutionary enthusiasm which inflamed the souls of our ancestors ; tell women what a noble career is that of a husband who devotes his life to the great cause of social emancipation. Show the people how hideous is their actual life, and place our hand on the causes of its ugliness; tell us what a rational life would be if it did not encounter at every step the follies and the ignominies of our pre­ sent social order. �J3 Lastly, all of you who possess knowledge, talent, capacity, industry, if you have a spark of sympathy in your nature, come, you and your companions, come and place your services at the disposal of those who most need them. And remember, if you do come, that you come not as masters, but as comrades in the struggle ; that you come not to govern but to gain strength for yourselves in a new life which sweeps upwards to the conquest of the future; that you come less to teach than to grasp the aspira­ tions of the many : to divine them, to give them shape, and then to work, without rest and without haste, with all the fire of youth and all the judgment of age, to realise them in actual life—then and then only will you lead a complete, a noble, a rational existence. Then you will see that your every effort on this path bears with it fruit in abundance, and this sublime harmony once established between your actions and the dictates of your conscience, will give you powers which you never dreamt lay dormant in yourselves. The never-ceasing struggle for truth, justice, and equality among the people, whose gratitude you will earn—what nobler career can the youth of all nations desire than this ? It has taken me long to show you of the well-to-do classes that in view of the dilemma which life presents to you, you will be forced, if courageous and sincere, to come and work side by side with Socialists, and champion in their ranks the cause of the social revolution. And yet how simple this truth is after all I But when one is speaking to those who have suffered from the effects of bourgeois surroundings, how many sophisms must be combated ! how many prejudices overcome ! how many interested objections pushed aside 1 It is easy to be brief to-day in addressing you, the youth of the people. The very pressure of events impels you to become Social­ ists, however little you may have the courage to reason and to act. To rise from the ranks of the working people, and not devote oneself to bringing about the triumph of Socialism, is to miscon­ ceive the real interests at stake, to give up the cause and the true historic mission. Do you remember the time, when still a mere lad, you went down one winter’s day to play in your dark court ? The cold nipped your shoulders through your thm clothes, and the mud worked into your worn-out shoes. Even then when you saw chubby children richly clad pass in the distance, looking at you with an air of contempt—you knew right well that these imps, dressed up to the nines, were not the equals of yourself and your comrades, either in intelligence, common sense, or energy. But, later, when you were forced to shut yourself up in a filthy factory from five or six o’clock in the morning, to remain twelve hours on end close to a whirling machine, and, a machine yourself, forced to follow day after day for whole years in succession its movements with their relentless throbbing—during all this time they, the others, were going quietly to be taught at fine schools, at academies, at the universities. And now these same children, less intelligent, but better taught than you, and become your masters, are enjoying all the pleasures of life, and all the advantages of civilisation—and you ? What sort of lot awaits you ? �T4 You return to little, dark, damp lodgings where five or six human beings pig together within a few square feet; where your mother, sick of life, aged by care rather than in years, offers you dry bread and potatoes as your only food, washed down by a blackish fluid called, in irony, tea ; and to distract your thoughts you have ever the same never-ending question, “ How shall I be able to pay the baker to-morrow, and the landlord the day after ? ” What! must you drag cn the same weary existence as your father and mother for thirty or forty years ? Must you toil your life long to procure for others all the pleasures of well-being, of knowledge, of art, and keep for yourself only the eternal anxiety as to whether you can get a bit of bread ? Will you for ever give up all that makes life so beautiful, to devote yourself to providing every luxury for a handful of idlers ? Will you wear yourself out with toil and have in return only trouble, if not misery, when hard times—the fearful hard times—come upon you ? Is this what you long for in life ? Perhaps you will give up ? Seeing no way out of your con­ dition whatever, maybe you say to yourself, “ Whole generations have undergone the same lot, and I, who can alter nothing in the matter, I must submit also ! Let us work on then and endeavour to live as well as we can ! ” Very well. In that case life itself will take pains to enlighten you. One day a crisis comes, one of those crises which are no longer mere passing phenomena, as they were a while ago, but a crisis which destroys a whole industry, which plunges thousands of workers into misery, which crushes whole families. You struggle like the rest against the calamity. But you will soon see how your wife, your child, your friend, little by little succumb to privations, fade away under your very eyes, and for sheer want of food, for lack of care and medical assistance, they end their days on the pauper’s stretcher, while the life of the rich sweeps past in joyous crowds through the streets of the great city gleaming in the sun­ light—utterly careless and indifferent to the dying cries of those who perish. Then you will understand how utterly revolting this society is ; you will reflect upon the causes of this crisis, and your examina­ tion will go to the very depths of this abomination which puts millions of human beings at the mercy of the brutal greed of a handful of useless triflers ; then you will understand that Socialists are right when they say that our present society can be, that it must be, reorganised from top to bottom. To pass from general crises to your particular case, one day when your master tries by a new reduction of wages to squeeze out of you a few more sous in order to increase his fortune still further, you will protest; but he will haughtily answer, “ Go and eat grass, if you will not work at the price I offer.” Then you will under­ stand that your master not only tries to shear you like a sheep, but that he looks upon you as an inferior kind of animal altogether; that not content with holding you in his relentless grip by means of the wage-system, he is further anxious to make you a slave in every respect. Then you will either bow down before him, you �IC will give up the feeling of human dignity, and you will end by suffering every possible humiliation. Or the blood will rush to your head, you will shudder at the hideous slope on which you are slipping down, you will retort, and, turned out workless on the street, you will understand how right Socialists are when they say “ Revolt 1 rise against this economical slavery, for that is the cause of all slavery.” Then you will come and take your place in the ranks of the Socialists, and you will work with them, for the complete destruction of all slavery,—economical, social and political. Some day again you will learn the story of that charming young girl whose brisk gait, frank manners, and cheerful conversation • you so lovingly admired. After having struggled for years and years against misery, she left her native village for the metropolis. There she knew right well that the struggle for existence must be hard, but she hoped at least to be able to gain her living honestly. Well, now you know what has been her fate. Courted by the son of some capitalist she allowed herself to be enticed by his fine words, she gave herself up to him with all the passion of youth, only to see herself abandoned with a baby in her arms. Ever courageous she never ceased to struggle on ; but she broke down in this unequal strife against cold and hunger, and she ended her days in one of the hospitals, no one knows which........................................ What will you do ? Once more there are two courses open to you. Either you will push aside the whole unpleasant reminiscence with some stupid phrase :—“ She wasn’t the first and won’t be the last,” you will say; perhaps, some evening, you will be heard in a public room, in company with other beasts like yourself, out­ raging the young girl’s memory by some dirty stories ; or, on the other hand, your remembrance of the past will touch your heart; you will try to meet the wretched seducer to denounce him to his face ; you will reflect upon the causes of these events which recur every day, and you will comprehend that they will never cease, so long as society is divided into two camps, on one side the wretched and on the other the lazy—the jugglers with fine phrases and bestial lusts. You will understand that it is high time to bridge over this gulf of separation, and you will rush to place yourself among the Socialists. And you, woman of the people, has this tale left you cold and unmoved ? While caressing the pretty head of that child who nestles close to you, do you never think about the lot that awaits him, if the present social conditions are not changed ? Do you never reflect on the future awaiting your young sister, and all your own children ? Do you wish that your sons, they too, should vegetate as your father vegetated, with no other care than how to get his daily bread, with no other pleasure than that of the gin­ palace ? Do you want your husband, your lads, to be ever at the mercy of the first comer who has inherited from his father a capital to exploit them with ? Are you anxious that they should always remain slaves of a master, food for powder, mere dung wherewith to manure the pasture-lands of the rich expropriator ? Nay, never ; a thousand times no ! I know right well that your blood has boiled when you have heard that your husbands after 4C �16 ' they entered on a strike, full of fire and determination, have ended by accepting, hat in hand, the conditions dictated by the bloated bourgeois in a tone of haughty contempt! I know that you have admired those Spanish women who in a popular rising presented their breasts to the bayonets of the soldiery in the front ranks ot the insurrectionists ! I am certain that you mention with rever­ ence the name of the woman who lodged a bullet in the chest of that ruffianly official who dared to outrage a Socialist prisoner in his cell. And I am confident that your heart beat faster when you read how the women of the people in Paris gathered under a rain of shells to encourage “ their men ” to heroic action. All this, I say, I have no doubt about, and that is why I cannot question that you also, you will end by joining those who work for the conquest of the future. Every one of you then, honest young folks, men and women, peasants, labourers, artisans and soldiers, you will understand what are your rights and you will come along with us ; you will come in order to work with your brethren in the preparation of that Revolution which sweeping away every vestige of slavery, tearing the fetters asunder, breaking with the old worn-out traditions and opening to all mankind a new and wider scope of joyous ex­ istence, shall at length establish true Liberty, real Equality, un­ grudging Fraternity throughout human society; work with all% work for all—the full enjoyment of the fruits of their labour, the complete development of all their faculties ; a rational, human and happy life ! Don’t let anyone tell us that we—but a small band—are too weak to attain unto the magnificent end at which we aim. Count and see how many of us there are who suffer this in­ justice. We peasants who work for others and who mumble the straw while our master eats the wheat, we by ourselves are millions of men ; so numerous are we that we alone form the mass of the people. We workers who weave silks and velvets in order that we may be clothed in rags, we, too, are a great multitude ; and when the clang of the factories permits us a moment’s repose, we overflow the streets and squares like the sea in a spring tide. We soldiers who are driven along to the word of command, or by blows, we who receive the bullets for which our officers get crosses and pensions, we, too, poor fools who have hitherto known no better than to shoot our brothers, why we have only to make a right-about-face towards these plumed and decorated personages who are so good as to command us, to see a ghastly pallor over­ spread their faces. Ay, all of us together, we who suffer and are insulted daily, we are a multitude whom no man can number, we are the ocean that can embrace and swallow up all else. When we have but the will to do it, that very moment will Justice be done: that very instant the tyrants of the earth shall bite the dust. Catalogue of Publications of the Modern Press sent on receipt of stamped envelope. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource An appeal to the young Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich [1842-1921] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. ; 23 cm. Series number: no. 6 Notes: Stamp on title page: 'South Place Chapel Finsbury, Lending Library'. Reprinted from 'To-Day'. At the time of publication the author was serving "five years' imprisonment under the French Republic for advocating the cause of the people" [Title page]. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1885 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G4969 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hyndman, H. M. (Henry Mayers) (tr) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (An appeal to the young), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Peter Kropotkin Socialism Young people https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/0c90e3b311155b46c37d98cc789d3d99.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=Bhh3kZ35hmrOL8HdTGHj9p--fTh7nxFLSWRxVLGMGe%7EYTjePHh8wS%7EeWq3JKe68uBJxgX-nC-tEitetBMg-GhbqslkxL%7EijDK%7E7pIHh53tXwENZ5uuPlf5a0zTK7mVIS7amvBijrKygcQ-TWnDr7QNOG5rKpwarqPgICa4K4%7EsxETTU5KBGp3wvc-6w9gb0i3757WhxcJu8l4I2Ywojm3hh9SsMbfOox045QSwOxjHR6wPiGdtmzmfcRTxIx57hUDDNyGIZHAM56vvfzPoVMudR%7Err%7EYf%7ErBl31jX8X7Pt65mGkRG%7EJGXLI1xnjvv5LMY2f%7EsXsJwb8Vbl8U0stZQg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 6713fa61109732cbccca1659b9fd6030 PDF Text Text Desirable Mansions: A TRACT Reprinted, with a few alterations, from “Progress, June, 1883. By EDWARD CARPENTER. THIRD EDITION PRICE ONE PENNY. Published by THE MODERN PRESS, 13, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 1887. �BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Towards Democracy. New edition, with numerous added Poems, crown 8vo, cloth, 260 pp. Price 2s. 6d “ A book whose power will certainly make it known.”— Dublin University Review. “ Truly ‘ mystic, wonderful ’—like nothing so much as a nightmare after too earnest a study of the Koran! ”— Graphic. “ Its plan includes a poetical appeal to the different nationalities of the world, a sketch of the characteristic features of England and English towns, and all kinds of industrial work, finally a series of dramatic pictures whose vividness and beauty seem magical.” — Cambridge Review. Modern Science : a Criticism. pp. Price is. Crown 8vo, paper, 7.6 Modern Money-Lending; or, the Meaning of DividendsA Pamphlet. Price 2d. Second edition. England’s Ideal. Price 2d. John Heywood, Deansgate and Ridgefield’ Manchester: 11, Paternoster Buildings, London. and ALSO Social Progress and Individual Effort. Reprinted from To-day. Price id. Co-operative Production, with an account of the experi­ ment of Leclaire. Price id. THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, London, E.C. For popular pamphlets on all political, social and, economical subjects, apply to The Modern Press, or send stamped envelope for catalogue. �DESIRABLE MANSIONS FTER all, why should we rail against the rich ? I think if anything they should be pitied. In nine cases out of ten it is not a man’s fault. He is born in the lap of luxury, he grows up surrounded by absurd and impossible ideas about life, the innumerable chains of habit and circumstance tighten upon him, and when the time comes that he would escape, he finds he cannot. He is condemned to flop up and down in his cage for the re­ mainder of his days—a spectacle of boredom, and a warning to gods and men. I go into the houses of the rich. In the drawing-room I see chill weary faces, peaked features of ill-health ; down­ stairs and in the kitchen I meet with rosy smiles, kissable cheeks, and hear sounds of song and laughter. What is this ? Is it possible that the real human beings live with Jeames below-stairs! Often as I pass and see in suburb or country some “ desir­ able mansion ” rising from the ground, I think : That man is building a prison for himself. So it is—a prison. I would rather spend a calendar month in Clerkenwell or Holloway than I would in that desirable mansion. A young lady that I knew, and who lived in such a mansion, used with her sisters to teach a class of factory girls. Every now and again one of the girls would say, “ Eh, Miss, how I would like to be a grand lady like you ! ” Then she would answer, “ Yes, but you know you wouldn’t be able to do everthing you liked ; for instance, you wouldn’t be allowed to go out walking when �4 you liked.” “ Eh, dear I ” they would say to one another, “ she is not allowed to go out walking when she likes—she is not allowed to go out walking when she likes ! ” Certainly you are not allowed to go out walking when you like. Reader, did you ever spend a day within those desirable walls ? I have, many. I wake up in the morning. It is fine and bright. I think to myself: I will have a pleasant stroll before breakfast. Yes—man proposes. It is all very well to meditate a morning walk, but where O where are my clothes ? I cannot very well go out without them. What can have be­ come of them ? Suddenly it occurs to me: James, honest soul, has taken them away to brush. Good. I wait. Nothing happens. I ring the bell. James appears. “ My clothes, James.” “Yes, sir.” Again I wait—an intolerable time. At last the familiar jacket and trousers appear. Good. Now * I can go out. Not so fast—where are your boots ? Boots, good gracious, I had forgotten them. Heaven knows where they are—I don’t. Probably fifty yards away. I creep downstairs. All is quiet. The servants are evidently at breakfast. It would be madness to hope to get boots brushed at such a moment. I would like to clean them myself. In fact I am fond of cleaning my own boots: the exercise is pleasant, and besides it is just such a little bit of menial work as I would rather do for myself than have others do for me; but, as I said before, one cannot do what one likes. In the first place, in this house where one is fifty yards away from everything one wants I have not the faintest idea where my boots are, or the means and instru­ ments of blacking them ; in the second place an even more fatal objection is that if I did succeed in committing this deed of darkness the consequent uproar in the house would be per­ fectly indescribable. The outrage on propriety would not only shock the feelings of the world below-stairs, but it would put to confusion the master of the house, upset the whole domestic machinery, create unpleasant qualms in the minds * A friend tells me that once, to revenge himself for this sort of trifling, he concealed his nether garment under the mattrass and then, in the morning, slyly watched the footman as he vainly sought round the room for it. The consequence however was that he fell very much in the esti­ mation of the latter, who doubtless thought that, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, his master’s visitor •' had gone to bed with his breeches on.” �5 of the other guests, and possibly make me feel that I had better not have lived. Accordingly, I abandon the idea of my pleasant stroll. It is not worth such a sacrifice. The birds are singing outside, the flowers are gay in the morning sun — but it must not be. Within, in the sitting-rooms, chaos reigns. Chairs and tables are piled in cheerful confusion upon one another, carpets are partially strewn with tea-leaves. To read a book or write an aimless letter to some one (the usual resource of people in desirable mansions) is clearly impossible; to do anything in the way of house-work is forbidden—it being well understood in such places that one may do any­ thing except what is useful. There remains nothing but to beat a retreat to my chamber again—put my hands in my pockets and whistle at the open window. “ Who was that I heard whistling so early this morning ? ” says my kindly old host at breakfast. “ O, it was you, was it ? I expect now you’re an early riser ; get up at seven, take a walk before breakfast; that sort of thing—eh ? ” “Yes, when I can,” I reply with ambiguous intent. “ Well, I call that wonderful,” says an elderly matron—not likely, as far as ap­ pearances go, to be accused of a similar practice—“ such energy, you know.” “ What a strong constitution you must have to be able to stand it! ” remarks a charming young lady on whom it has not yet dawned that the vast majority of human kind have their breakfast before half-past nine. This is not a good beginning to the day ; but the rest is like unto it. I find that there are certain things to be done—a certain code of things that you may do, a certain way of doing them, a certain way of putting your knife and fork on your plate. When you come down to dinner in the evening you must put on what the Yankees call a claw-hammer coat. It is not certain, (and that is just the grisly part of it) what would happen if you did not do this. In some societies evidently such a casualty has never been contemplated. I have heard people seriously discussing—in cases where the required article was missing—what could be done, where one might be borrowed, &c.—but clearly it did not occur to them that anyone could dine in his natural clothes. Sometimes, when in a fashionable church, I have wondered whether it would be possible to worship God in a flannel shirt— but I suppose that to go out to a dinner party in such a �6 costume would be even more unthinkable. As I said before, you are in prison. Submit to the prison rules, and it is all right—attempt to go beyond them, and you are visited with condign punishment. The rules have no sense, but that does not matter (possibly some ot them had sense once, but it must have been a very long time ago); the people are good people, no better nor worse in themselves than the real workers, the real hands and hearts of the world; but they are condemned to banishment from the world, condemned into the prison houses of futility. The stream of human life goes past them as they gaze wearily upon it through their plate-glass windows; the great Mother’s breasts of our common Humanity, with all its toils and suf­ ferings and mighty joys, are withheld from them. Dimly al last I think I understand why it is their faces are so chill and sad, their unnourished lives so unhealthy and over-sensitive. Truly, if I could pity anyone, I would them. By the side of the road there stands a little girl, crying ; she has lost her way. It is very cold, and she looks pinched and starved. “ Come in, my little girl, and sit by my cottage fire, and you’ll soon get warm; and I’ll see if I can't find you a bit of something to eat before you go on . . . Eh 1 dear ! how stupid I am—I quite forgot. I am sorry 1 can’t ask you in, but I am living in a desirable mansion now—and though we are very sorry for you, yet you see we could hardly have you into our house, for your dirty little boots would make a dreadful mess of our carpets, and we should have to dust the chairs after you had sat upon them, and you see Mrs. Vavasour might happen to come in, and she would think it so very odd ; and I know cook can’t bear beggars, and, O dear ! I’m so sorry for you—and here’s a penny, and I hope you’ll get home safely.” The stream of human life goes past. When a rich man builds himself a prison, he puts up all these fences to shut the world out—to shut himself in. If he can he builds far back from the high road. In the front of his house he has a bound­ less polite lawn, with polite flower beds, afar from vulgarpeople and animals. Rows of polite servants attend upon him; and there within of inanity and politeness he dies. Of what human life really consists in he has little idea. He has not the faintest notion of what is necessary for human life or happi­ �7 ness. Sometimes with an indistinct vision of accumulated evil, he says: “ Poor So-and-so, he has only ^200 a year to keep his wife and family on ! ” No wonder his own daughters dedicate themselves to “ good works.” They go out with the curate and visit at neighbouring cottages. Their visits have little appreciable effect on the people, but are a great benefit to themselves and the curate. They observe, for the first time, how life is carried on ; they see the operations of scrub­ bing and cooking (removed in their own houses afar from mortal polite eye) ; perhaps they behold a mother actually suckling her own babe, and learn that such things are pos­ sible ; finally, they “ wonder ” how “ those .people ” live, and to them their wonder (like the fear of God) is the beginning of wisdom. The lord of the mansion sits on the magisterial bench or strides about his fields, and lumps together all who are not in a similar position to himself as the “ lower classes.” After dinner in the evening, if the conversation turns on politics, he and his compeers discuss the importance of keeping the said lower classes in order, or the best method of “ raising ” them out of the ignorance and disorder in which they are supposed to wallow. And during the conversation it will be noticed that it is by everyone tacitly allowed and understood, and is, in fact, the very foundation of the whole argument, that the speakers themselves belong to an educated class, while the mass of the people are uneducated. Yet this is exactly the reverse of the truth—for they themselves belong to an ill-educated class, and the mass of the people are, by the very nature of the case, the better educated of the two. In fact, the education of the one set of people (and it is a great pity that it should be so) consists almost entirely in the study of books. That is very useful in its way, and if pro­ perly balanced with other things; but it is hardly necessary to point out that books only deal with phantoms and shadows of reality. The education of the world at large, and the real education, lies, and must always lie, in dealing with the things themselves. To put it shortly (as it has been put before), one man learns to spell a “ spade,” to write it, to rhyme it, to translate it into French and Latin—possibly, like Wordsworth, to address a sonnet to it—the other man learns to use it. Is there any comparison between the two ? �8 Now is it not curious that those good people sitting round their dinner table in the desirable mansion, or listening to a little music in the drawing-room, should actually be so ignorant of the world, and what goes on in it, as to think, and honestly believe, that they are, par excellence, the educated people in it ? * Does it ever occur to them, I often think, to inquire who made all the elegant and costly objects with which they are surrounded ? Does it ever occur to them, as they tacitly assume the inferiority of the working classes, to think of the table itself across which they speak—how beauti­ fully fitted, veneered, polished ; the cloth which lies upon it, and the weaving of it; the chairs and other furniture, so light and yet so strong, each requiring the skill of years to make ; the silver, the glass, the steel, the tempering, hardening, grinding, fitting, riveting ; the lace and damask curtains, the wonderful machinery, the care, the delicate touch, adroit manipulation ? the piano 1 the very house itself in which they spend their days ! Is there one, I say, who we will not say could make even the smallest part, but who even has the faintest idea how one of these things is.made, where it is made, who makes it ? Not one. All the care, the loving thought, the artistic design, the conscientious workmanship that have been expended, and are daily expended, on these things and the like of them—go past them unrecognised, unacknowledged. The great hymn of human labour over the earth is to them an idle song. There, in the midst of all these beautiful products of toil and ingenuity, possessing but not enjoying, futile they sit, and fancy themselves educated— fit to rule. I have heard of a fly that sat stinging upon the hindquarters of a horse, and fancied that without it the cart would not go. Fancied so, I say, until the great beast whisked its tail, and after that it fancied nothing more. Doi put these things in a strong light? May be, I do; but I put them faithfully as I have seen them, and as I see them daily. * “ . . . . People who roll about in their fine equipages scarcely knowing what to do with themselves or what ails them, and some of whom occasionally run to such places as ours to have their carriage linings or cushions altered, or to know if they *can be altered as they don't feel quite 1 comfortable.' I often think ‘ God help them,’ for no one else can. . . I insert this extract just to show how these things are regarded from the side which does not usually find expression. It is from a letter written by an elderly and gentle-hearted man, employed in a carriage factory. �9 I do not suppose that riches are an evil in themselves. I do not suppose that anything is an evil in itself. I know that even in the midst of all these shackles and impediments, that wonderfulest of things, the human soul, may work out its own salvation ; and well I know that there are no condi­ tions or circumstances of human life, nor any profession from a king to a prostitute, that may not become to it the gateway of freedom and immortality. But I daily see people setting this standard of well-to-do respectability before them, daily more and more hastening forth in quest of desirable mansions to dwell in ; and I cannot but wonder whether they realise what it is they seek ; I cannot lend my voice to swell the chorus of encouragement. Here are the clean facts. Choose for yourselves. That is all. Respectability ! Heavy-browed and hunch-backed word ' Once innocent and light-hearted as any other word, why now in thy middle age art thou become so gloomy and saturnine ? Is it that thou art responsible for the murder of the innocents ? Respectability! Vision of clean hands and blameless dress— why dost thou now appear in the form of a ghoul before me ? I confess that the sight of a dirty hand is dear to me. It warms my heart with all manner of good hopes and promises. Often and long have I thought about this matter, and in all good faith I must say that I fail to see how hands always clean are compatible with honesty. This is no play upon words. I fail to see how in the long run, any man that takes his share in the work of the world can keep his hands in this desirable state. How ? The answer is obvious enough—leave others to do the dirty work. Good ! Let it be so ; let it be granted that others shall do the scrubbing and baking, the digging, the fishing, the breaking of horses, the carpentering, build­ ing, smithing, and the myriad other jobs that have to be done, and you at the pinnacle of all this pyramid of work, above all, keep your hands clean. We shouting to you from below, exhort you—At all costs, keep your hands cle‘an ! Think how important it is, while the great ships have to be got into harbour, that your nails should be blameless ! Think if by any accident you were to do a real good piece of work, and get your hands thoroughly grimed over it, unwashable for a week, what confusion would ensue to yourself and �IO friends ! Think O think of your clients, or of the next dinner party, and earnestly and prayerfully resolve that such a fall may never be yours. Seek, we pray you, some secure work—some legal, clerical, official, capitalist, or land­ owning business, safe from the dread stain of dirty hands, whatever other dirt it may bring with it—some thoroughly gentlemanly profession, marking you clearly off from the vulgar and general masses, and the blessing of heaven go with you ! Shut yourself off from the great stream of human life, from the great sources of physical and moral health ; ignore the common labour by which you live, show clearly your contempt for it, your dislike of it, and then ask others to do it for you ; turn aside from nature, divorce yourself from the living breathing heart of the nation; and then you will have done, what the governing classes of England to-day have done, have given full directions to your own heart and brain how to shrivel and starve and die. Man is made to work with his hands. This is a fact which cannot be got over. From this central fact he cannot travel far. I don’t care whether it is an individual or a class, the life which is far removed from this becomes corrupt, shrivelled, and diseased. You may explain it how you like, but it is so. Administrative work has to be done in a nation as well as productive work ; but it must be done by men accustomed to manual labour, who have the healthy decision and primitive authentic judgment which comes of that, else it cannot be done well. In the new form of society which is slowly advancing upon us, this will be felt more than now. The higher the position of trust a man occupies the more will it be thought important that, at some period of his life, he should have been thoroughly inured to manual work ; this not only on account of the physical and moral robustness implied by it, but equally because it will be seen to be im­ possible for any one, without this experience of what is the very flesh and blood of national life, to promote the good health of the nation, or to understand the conditions under which the people live whom he has to serve. But to return to the sorrows of the well-to-do—and care that sits on the crupper of wealth. This is a world-old and well-worn subject. Yet, possibly, some of its truisms may �II bear repeating. A clergyman, preaching once on the trials of life, turned first to his rich friends and bade them call to mind, one by one, the sorrows and sufferings of the poor; then, turning to his “ poorer brethren,” he exhorted them also not to forget that the rich man had his afflictions—with which they should sympathise—amongst which afflictions, growing chiefly out of their much money, he reckoned “ last, but not least, the difficulty of finding for it an investment which should be profitable and also secure 1 ” It has been generally supposed that the poorer brethren failed to sym­ pathise with this form of suffering. But it is a very real one. What cares, what anxieties, what yellow and blue fits, what sleepless nights, dance at­ tendance on the worshiper in the great Temple of Stocks ! The capricious deity that dwells there has to be appeased by ceaseless offerings. Usury ! crookfaced idol, loathed, yet grovelled to by half the world, whose name is an abomination to speak openly, yet whose secret rites are practised by thousands who revile thy name, what spell of gloom and bilious misery dost thou cast over thy worshipers! Is it possible that the ancient curse has not yet lost its effect: that to acquire interest on money and to acquire interest in life are not the same thing ; that they are positively not com­ patible with each other; that to fly from one’s just share of labour in the world, in order to live upon the hard-earned profits of others, is not, and cannot come to good ? Is it possible, I say, reader, that there is a moral law in the world facing us quite calmly in every transaction of our lives by which it must be so—by which cowardice and sham cannot breed anything else for us but gloom and bilious misery ? In this age which rushes to stocks—to debenture, preference, consolidated, and ordinary stocks, to shares, bonds, coupons, dividends—-not even refusing scrip when it can get it—does it ever occur to us to consider what it all means ?—to con­ sider that all the money so gained is taken from some one else ; that what we have not earned cannot possibly be ours, except by gift, or (shall I say it ?) theft ? How can it then come with a blessing ? How can we not but think of the railway operatives, the porters, managers, clerks, superin­ tendents, drivers, stokers, platelayers, carriage - washers, navvies, out of whose just earnings (and from no other �12 source) our dividends are taken ? ■ Let alone honesty—what, surely, does our pride say to this ? Is it possible that this frantic dividend-dance of the present day is like a dance of dancers dancing without any music—an aimless incoherent impossible dance, weltering down at last to idiocy and oblivion ? Curious, is it not, that this subject (of dividends) is never mentioned before said wage-receiving classes ? I have often noticed that. When James enters the room, or Jeffery comes to look at the gas-fittings, the babble of stocks dies faintly away, as if ashamed of itself? and while a man will, without reserve, allude to his professional salary, he is generally as secret concerning his share-gotten gains as ladies are said to be about their age. But, as I said at first, these things are not generally a man’s fault. They are the product of the circumstances in which he is born. From his childhood he is trained osten­ sibly in the fear of God, but really in the fear of money. The * whole tenor of the conversation which he hears round him, and his early teaching, tend to impress upon him the awful dangers of not having enough. Strange that it never occurs to parents of this class to teach their children how little they can live upon, and be happy (but perhaps they do not know). Hence, the child of the poor man—even in these adverse times—grows up with some independence of mind, for he knows that if at any time he can obtain £50 or ^100 a year by the work of his hands, he will be able to bring up a little family; while the son of a rich man in the midst of a family income of fifty times ^50, learns to tremble slavishly at the prospect of the future ; dark hints of the workhouse are whispered in his ears ; father and mother, school-teachers and friends, join in pressing him into a pro­ fession which he hates—stultifying his whole life—because it will lead to ^500, or even ^1,000 a year in course of time. This is the great test, the sure criterion between two paths: which will lead to more money? The youth* Or as Mr. Locker has it, They eat and drink and scheme and plod, And go to church on Sunday; For many are afraid of God, And more of Mrs. Grundy. �i3 ful tender conscience soon comes to look upon it as a duty, and the acquisition of large dividends as part of the serious work of life. Then come true the words of the preacher: he realises with painful clearness the difficulty of finding investments which shall be profitable and also secure; circulars, reports, newspaper-cuttings, and warning letters flow in upon him, sleepless nights are followed by anxious days, telegrams and railway journeys succeed each other. But the game goes on : the income gets bigger, and the fear of the workhouse looms closer ! Friendsand relations also, have shares. Some get married and others die. Hence trustee-ships and executor-ships, increasing in number year by year, coil upon coil; solicitors hover around on all sides, jungles of legal red tape have to be waded through, chancery looms up with its “ obscene birds ” upon the horizon, and the hapless boy, now an old man before his time, with snatched meals and care-lined brow, goes to and fro like an automaton—a walking testimony to his own words that “ the days of his happiness are long gone past.” Before God, I would rather with pick and shovel dig a yearlong drain beneath the open sky, breathing freely, than I would live in this jungle of idiotic duties and thin-lipped respect­ abilities that money breeds. Why the devil should the days of your happiness be gone past, except that you have lived a life to stultify the whole natural man in you ? Do you think that happiness is a little flash-in-the-pan when you are eighteen, and that is all ? Do you not know that expanding age, like a flower, lifts itself ever into a more and more exquisite sun­ light of happiness—to which Death, serene and beautiful, comes only at the last with the touch of perfected assurance ? Do you not know that the whole effort of Nature in you is towards this happiness, if you could only abandon yourself, and for one child-like moment have faith in your own mother ? But she knows it, and watches you, half amused, run after your little “ securities,” knowing surely that you must at length return to her. But wherein the affluent classes suffer most in the present day perhaps is the matter of health. Into that heaven it is indeed hard for a rich man to enter. Here again the whole tradition of his life is against him. If there is one thing that appears to me more certain than another it is, as I have �partly said before, that no individual or class can travel far from the native life of the race without becoming shrivelled, corrupt, diseased—without suffering, in fact. By the native life I mean the life of those (always the vast majority of human kind) who live and support themselves in direct contact with Nature. * To rise early, to be mostly in the open air, to do some amount of physical labour, to eat clean and simple food, are necessary and aboriginal conditions of the life of our race, and they are necessary and aboriginal conditions of health. The doctor who does not start from these as .the basis of his prescriptions does not know his work. The modern money-lender, man of stocks, or what­ ever you call him, and his family, live in the continual violation of these conditions. They get up late, are mostly indoors, do little or no physical work, and take quantities of rich and greasy food and stimulants, such as would exhaust the stomach of a strong man, but which to them, in their already enervated state, are simply fatal. Hence a long catalogue of evils, ever branching into more. Hence dys­ pepsia, nerves, liver, sexual degeneracies, and general de­ pression of vitality ; a gloomy train, but whose drawn features you will recognise if you peep into almost anyone of those desirable mansions of which I have spoken. A terrible symptom of our well-to-do (?) modern life is this want of health, and one which presses for serious attention. There is only one remedy for it; but that remedy is a sure one— the return (or advance) to a simpler mode of existence. What is the upshot of all this? There was a time when the rich man had duties attending his wealth. The lord or baron was a petty king, and had kingly responsibilities as well as power. The Sir Roger, of Addison’s time, was the succeeding type of landlord. And even to the present day there lingers, here and there, a country squire who fulfils that * It must be noticed that the working masses of our great towns do not by any means fulfil this condition. Thrust down into squalor by the very effort of others climbing to luxury, the unnaturalness and misery of their lives is the direct counterpart and inseparable accompaniment of the un­ naturalness of the lives of the rich. That the great masses of our popula­ tion to-day are in this unhealthy state does not however disprove the statement in the text—i.e., that the vast majority of mankind must live in direct contact with Nature—rather it would indicate that the present conditions can only be of brief duration. �j M fl! IUHM 15 now antiquated ideal of kindly condescension and patronage. But the modern rush of steam-engines, and the creation of an enormous class of wealthy folk, living on stocks, have completely subverted the old order. It has let loose on society a horde of wolves !—a horde of people who have no duties attaching to their mode of life, no responsibility. They roam hither and thither, seeking whom and what they may devour. Personally I have no objection to criminals, and think them quite as good as myself. But, Talk of criminal classes—can there be a doubt that the criminal classes, par excellence, in our modern society, are this horde of stock and share-mongers ? If to be a criminal is to be an enemy of society, then they are such. For their mode of life is founded on the principle of taking without giving, of claiming without earning—as much as that of any common thief. It is in vain to try and make amends for this by charity organisations and unpaid magistracies. The cure must go deeper. It is no good trying to set straight the roof and chimneys, when the whole foundation is aslant. These good people are not boarded and lodged at Her Majesty’s pleasure, but the Eternal Justice, unslumbering, causes them to build prisons (as I have said) for themselves-—plagues them with ill-health and divers unseen evils— and will and must plague them, till such time as they shall abandon the im­ possible task they have set themselves, and return to the paths of reason. The whole foundation is aslant—and aslip, as anyone may see who looks. In short, it is an age of transition. No mortal power could make durable a Society founded on Usury—universal and boundless usury. The very words scream at each other. The baron has passed away; and the landlord is passing. They each had their duties, and while they fulfilled them served their time well and faithfully. The shareholder has no duties, and is miserable, and will remain so till the final landslip, when the foundations having completely given way, he will crawl forth out of the ruins of his desirable mansion into the life and light of a new day. Less oracular than this I dare not be! As I have said before there is no conceivable condition of life in which the human soul may not find the materials of its surpassing deliverance from evil and mortality. And I for �one would not, if I had the power, cramp human life into the exhibition of one universal routine. If anyone desires to be rich, if anyone desires to gradually shut himself off from the world, to build walls and fences, to live in a house where it is impossible to get a breath of fresh air without going through half a dozen doors, and to be the prisoner of his own servants; if he desires it so that when he walks down the street he cannot whistle or sing, or shout across the road to a friend, or sit upon a doorstep when tired, or take off his coat if it be hot, but must wear certain particular clothes in a certain particular way, and be on such pins and needles as to what he may or may not do, that he is right glad when he gets back again to his own prison walls ; if he loves trustee­ ships and Egyptian Bonds, and visits from the lawyer, and feels glad when he finds a letter from the High Court of Chancery on his breakfast table, and experiences in attend­ ing to all these things that satisfaction which comes of all honest work ; if he feels renovated and braced by lying in bed of a morning, and by eating feast dinners every day, and by carefully abstaining from any bodily labour ; if dyspepsia, and gout, and biliousness, and distress of nerves are not otherwise than grateful to him ; and if he can obtain all these things without doing grievous wrong to others, by all means let him have them. Only for those who do not know what they desire I would lift up the red flag of warning. Only of that vast and ever vaster horde which to-day (chiefly, I cannot but think, in ignorance) rushes to Stocks, would I ask a moment’s pause, and to look at the bare facts, If these words should come to the eye of such an one I would pray him to think for a moment—to glance at this great enthroned Wrong in its dungeon palace (notffhe less a wrong because the laws coun­ tenance and encourage it)—to listen for the cry of the home­ less many, trodden under foot, a yearly sacrifice to it—to watch the self-inflicted sufferings of its worshipers, the ennui, the depression, the unlovely faces of ill-health, to observe the falsehood on which it is founded, and therefore the falsehood, the futility, the unbelief in God or Man which spring out of it—and to turn away, determined, as far as in him lies, to worship in that Dagon-house no longer. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Desirable mansions : a tract Description An account of the resource Edition: 3rd ed. Place of publication: London Collation: 16 p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Reprinted, with a few alterations, from Progress, June 1883. List of other works by author on p. 2. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Carpenter, Edward Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1887 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T395 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Desirable mansions : a tract), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Social change Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/bc2ee93a7b6f05df98ecc1744f9cde1e.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=V7JUgOuyVKmoHWBeRn-yzkiW1vKirNqzjdlGm1iapjB4uo0AmuWtOkRUTdMgJPQInOCERBLpNCEoUB1UqoaoivRP06upK3Vh5xsHU3TpnVCwJJ4%7E0UR4xMv6mLSAOcwU-lt3GfwPQN0T5PhPVVvb4My9453HQRPnoHmEuDhXAE2qiNnTG6mzr5Q-u-qgp7ibtiEPE-qYjZvcPuSxV6fAh-lTkcN8-j79yjhOXekAXCmMPyQuF0poX3wVJqgmkLEE7GMjuxs2sIsYa7li-vOK6E5R7JFLX-Oodv679tcVw845fNXrrMPbNKXa3Fh7bvIHQcBk8FM7-SlWUioEiCgOog__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM b5ae19bd1efb889517e4ac9d0b539471 PDF Text Text I I / f fc / Smithism. Socialism AN OPEN LETTER FROM H. M. HYNDMAN, TO SAMUEL SMITH, PRICE M.P. TWOPENCE. {Sold for the Benefit of the Democratic Federation}. Printed THE and Published MODERN at PRESS, 13 & 14, Paternoster Row, London, E.C. ��SOCIALISM u. SMITHISM. AN OPEN LETTER From H. M. HYNDMAN To SAMUEL SMITH, M.P. Sir, Pressure of more important matters has prevented me from answering the two letters which you wrote to me last summer criticising the manifesto of the Demo­ cratic Federation, entitled “ Socialism Made Plain.” Now that you have published them, however, and they have been noticed a little in the press, it may be well that I should point out to you the misstatements and errors they contain. You begin, for instance, by directing my attention to the Eighth clause of the Jewish Decalogue. “ Thou shalt. not steal” is, you say, one of God’s commandments, and upon this you base your “ Christian morality.” I have no objection to that. Only permit me to point out to you, in turn, that you commence the application of the commandment a good deal too high up. My view is that to steal labour is to steal the most valuable of all property, that which indeed is the basis of all property, and without which there would be no property at all for anybody to steal. Sir, I beg you to think of that when next you are paying the wage-slaves in your cotton-mill a fraction of the value of the labour they have expended for the benefit of you and your class. �4 Possibly it may occur to you at the same time that the Founder of your faith denounced the landlords and capitalists of his day far more furiously than I should think quite polite speaking of them as “ hypocrites who lay waste widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayers, the same,” Christ said, “shall receive the greater damnation.” So you see that there are some “ neighbours ” whom your God does not “ love.” Nor do I. I feel, however, that it is a little out of place to bandy biblical quotations with a Liverpool lawyer. So I will not touch upon your prophetical account of what would be the result if our suggestions were put in practice. Such apocalyptic sketches read a little silly when signed •“ Samuel Smith.” Rather let us deal with political economy and figures. I will say in passing^that I am treating of my own country and its inhabitants. I am •quite content to know something about, them without •setting to work to unravel the intricacies of remote and .ancient Asiatic civilisations altogether beside the ques­ tion at issue between us. We contend then that labour applied {to natural objects is the source of all wealth. You reply that the organising brain is quite as necessary as labour, and that Watt’s great invention of the steam engine “ added more than a million pair of hands could do to the wealth of the country.” At this rate Watt and his immediate descendants should have received all [the] additional wealth due to the steam engine. But to start with I deny that Watt individually invented the~steam-engine. It would equally have been invented at the end of the eighteenth century if he had never lived, though his �5 improvements made it available a little more rapidly.. Moreover, he could not even have made those improve­ ments but for the existence of skilled workers immedi­ ately around him; and these certainly he did not “ invent ” for they were the result of thousands or millions of years of human progress. But even admitting for the sake of argument the truth of your contention— what then? Who gets the chief benefit of Watt’s in­ vention ? Assuredly not the labourers. It is a matter of fact, which you can verify or not as you choose, that the mass of the working people of this country were better off—that is could buy more food and better raiment in proportion to their wages—during the period just prior to the application of steam on a large scale (1720-1775) than they have ever been since. The pro­ fits due to the steam-engine have therefore been taken not by Watt, who, according to you, invented it, nor by his descendants, who, I presume, should have inherited it, nor by the workers who helped to perfect it and have ever since served it, but by the capitalists who have used it as a machine to grind such profits out of the labour of their fellow-creatures. So much for the contention that steam has so greatly benefited your working country­ men. But you still claim payment for “the organising brain.” Here again I might fairly urge that if all were living in comfort and health the organiser, as such, would have no right to complain if he were paid no more than his fellow. The Roman organiser, th&villicus, received a less ration than the slaves whose labour he organised, precisely because his duty was less exhaust­ ing than theirs. Even to-day it is not the direct �6 organiser, manager, or superintendent who draws such a vast salary, but the idle capitalists who sit at home drawing interest and profits. I read with amusement your pathetic description of “ the anxious careworn ” capitalists who “have become bankrupt.” Doubtless you had your noble Liverpool cotton cornerer, Mr. Morris Ranger, in your mind. Probably he is quite sound on “ Christian morality ” too ? Seriously, we know something of what the profits of the Lancashire cotton trade have been since the beginning of the present century, and how they have been ground out of the very life-blood of women and little children. It is rather late in the day, Sir, for you to put forward such men as the Lancashire cotton-lords and Liverpool cotton-brokers as self-sacrificing lovers of the human race, as “anxious careworn” philanthropists nobly taking a trifling percentage in order to provide three millions of their country-people with bread. No, no, my dear Sir ; good, worthy Christian man as you are, law­ yer, Member of Parliament, philanthropist, cotton­ spinner, social reformer, and the rest of it, your own original business shoud have taught you the danger of proving just a trifle too much. Turn to the Report of the Inspector of Factories for the year 1875, and there read how the wage-slaves of Lancashire still fare under the system of production for the profit of capitalists. I note that you are a Malthusian—a truly Christian doctrine that by the way. I have dealt fully with the familiar fallacy of Malthus in my book on “ The Historical Basis of Socialism in England,” just published by Messrs. Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., so I will not �expose it further here. I will only observe that in. England the’power of man over nature increases at a far greater rate than any possible increase of population. There are too many idlers—including, saving your pre sence, “ lawyers, parsons, shopkeepers, landlords, capitalists, innkeepers, publicans, Members of Parlia­ ment, members of the army and navy, &c.”—not too many workers in this England of ours. Ireland—but I am really amazed. Are you not the Samuel Smith, Liberal M.P. for the city of Liverpool ? Are you not a firm supporter of this “ Liberal ” Government ? And yet you can see nothing but over-population in Ireland.' How odd 1 Famine in Ireland, Sir, is due to landlord robbery taking the food from the people in the shape of rack-rent; as misery and starvation in England are due to capitalist and landlord robbery taking the labour, which means the food, from the people in the shape of rent and profits. Why, Sir, your party founded their Irish Land Bill on this very contention. And you don’t know it ! Let me make our general position a little plainer. Owing to the fact that the means of production, the land, the capital, the machinery and the credit are in the hands of the upper and middle classes, the workers who have no property whatever beyond their mere labour-force, are obliged to sell that labour-force as a simple commodity, and therefore to sell themselves as wage-slaves in return for a bare subsistence. They give back however the value of their wages to the employing class in the first quarter of their day’s work. Thus, by means of monopoly and economical oppression enforced by the State, which the upper and middle classes own �8 and control, the workers are legally robbed of threefourths of the labour-value they produce. This threefourths, called economically surplus value, feeds fat those who chant aloud every Sunday “ Thou shalt not not steal,” after having done a good six days’ thieving in the week. They hold on tight to the labour-value they have robbed, and denounce as scoundrels the meddlesome moralists who will cry “ Stop thief! ” I would remark, in reference to the last clause in your letter, that we do not propose to “ divide ” the land. This, if you had known anything of modern social and political economy, you would have seen beforehand. Our proposal is to put in the first place heavy cumulative taxation on all rents as on all other incomes, and having thus gradually expropriated the landlords and capitalists, to work the railways, the shipping, the factories, and the land in the most skilful fashion on a large scale with the most improved machinery under a Democratic State or Communal management. In this way only will the infamous confiscation of labour which goes on under our present competitive system be put a stop to. Produc­ tion being now a social business exchange must be a social business too. So much for Letter I. Now for Letter II. and its figures. Your jaunt to Whitehall Gardens seems to me to have been bootless. Mr. Robert Giffen has “ let you in,” as he has let in many an unwary Member of Parliament before you. Statistics don’t always mean exactly the same to our dexterous manipulator of the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade, as anyone who has watched his career is very well aware. I fancy Mr. Giffen had a little private chuckle as you went �9 jubilantly down the staircase and set to work there and then to make ready his Anti-Socialist address for the Statistical Society. That address to the Statistical Society you have, I daresay, read and rejoiced over. Five years ago, however, Mr. Robert Giffen, who was then deeply concerned to show how enormously capital was growing in this country—there is a sort of fascina­ tion for some minds in the contemplation of gigantic and successful robbery—Mr. Robert Giffen, I say, then showed that the working classes (that is to say, the producing classes and those engaged in distribution as wage-earners apart from profit) received only ^338,700,000 a year out of a total income of ^1,200,000,000. Mr. Giffen still puts the income at £1,200,000,000 a year. I put it at ^1,300,000,000 but I am content to take the smaller figure without any detriment to my argument. Out of either income I say that the workers get now only ^300,000,000. My reasons for giving these figures as the share which the producers receive are, (1) that of late years the average wages of the working classes have certainly decreased ; (2) that in 1868 the late Mr. Dudley Baxter—quite as competent a statist as Mr. Giffen—put them at ^257,000,000 ; (3) that five or six years ago Mr. Giffen himself put them at ^338,700,000 as already stated ; (4) that a most careful survey which I myself have made of the different trades and the average wages of the workers in them brings me to the conclusion that /"3oo,ooo,ooo is not an understatement at the present time. The total you give would include not merely the wages of producers but of domestic servants, of the army and navy, and of a whole army of hangers-on of �IO the profit-making classes. Even the Economist considers Mr. Robert Giffen’s recent estimate of ^620,000,000 a flagrant example of statistical fudging. Besides, if we were to assume that the working classes earn what you say they do, viz.: £500,000,000 a year, or ^200,000,000 a year more than they actually take, you have still omitted a most important element in the problem. That is, how much do the workers refund out of their scanty wages to the capitalist class in the shape of rent for houses whose entire value has already been paid for two or three or in some cases twenty times over ? How much do they refund in the shape of profit on retail articles and adulterated wares ? The average amount paid by the workers as rent for bad and insufficient lodging alone amounts to from one-fifth to one-third of their weekly wages. Sir, our figures are quite correct, and even Mr. Giffen’s recent paper, stripped of its^optimistic veneer and boiled down to bare-facts, proves that they are so. You will observe that in spite of what he wrote or said to you he puts the incomes over ^150 a year at just ^"600,000,000 a year, as I did, or ^575,000,000. But in the face of this Mr. Giffen states that there is no spare capital to divide with the workers nor has there ever been; in fact the capitalist class could not possibly carry on at all with less than they .receive. Statists, like another imaginative set of people, should cultivate a good memory. In 1878 this very man, Mr. Robert Giffen, the Head of the Statistical Department of the Board of Trade, the owner and principal writer for the Statist newspaper, a frequent contributor to the Times, &c., &c., �II proved conclusively that the capital of this country, apart from ordinary profits, interest, rents, &c., was actually increasing at the rate of ^250,000,000 each year— more than three-fourths of the total amount received by the producers in wages. * The total increase of capital in England between 1865 and 1875 was, he averred, certainly not less than ^2,500,000,000 ; do read the amount, Sir—two thousand five hundred millions ster­ ling in ten years. On this point also compare Mr. Mulhall whom you quote as an authority. Poor “ anxious, careworn ” capitalists, humane 2 per cent, philanthropists, how heavy those ill-gotten gains must have lain in their breeches pockets ! Made out of the labour of others, Mr. Samuel Smith, every penny of it, many of whom are now rotting in the pauper grave­ * After the publication of Mr. Giffen’s address in the Times, I wrote a letter to the Editor of that journal pointing out that Mr. Giffen had greatly changed his views as to the share taken by capital since 1878, and that according to the figures which he then gave, and those which he now put forward, the amount of wages received by the working-class had increased nearly ^300,000,000— from 7^338,700,000 to ^620,000,000—during five years of general depression of trade. This letter was printed, and drew from Mr. Giffen the reply that my statement was utterly untrue ; that he had never made any estimate of the income of the working-classes, or of any other class, until the date of that address to the Statistical Society ; and that he could not imagine where I got my figures from. Mr. Giffen added that he only “ assumed ” the total income in 1878 at ^1,200,000,000. This, although he had stated to Mr. Samuel Smith, M.P. a few months since that he had arrived at the very figures “by adding together the incomes of every person in the country.” I could only rejoin that the simple processes of addition and subtraction applied to the figures set forth by Mr. Giffen five or six years ago, gives the result of which he complained. And I asked how a Statist of his studies and reputation could declare authoritatively that capital was increasing at the rate of ^250,000,000 a year, unless he had made some such computation ? Up to the moment of writing the Times has not printed my letter. I am obliged therefore to give this explanation here, and to ask doubters to turn to Mr. Giffen’s own calculations .as the best possible refutation of himself. �12 yard before their time by reason of this robbery. Where do God and Christ and the eighth commandment come in ? Pray give us a few texts. Better still, perhaps,, reprint for us the list of millionaires from the middle class Spectator, and spread broadcast a copy of Lord' Overstone’s will. You argue in places as if we Socialists wished to main­ tain the present form of society subject to taking the property of the upper and middle classes—as if compet­ ition would still go on, and wages being high the population of the whole earth would flock hither. When we see them coming we shall make preparations for their reception, take my word for that. But we know well that they will follow our example and deal with, their own oppressors on the spot. In the meantime, we are striving to overthrow our present society, not out of sheer malignity and eternal “ cussedness,” as you. suppose, but in order to substitute State co-operation and organisation of labour in all departments for that competition for gain above, and competition for bare subsistence wages below which bring about such terrible results. We hold also that all class distinctions must inevitably be abolished. Even as it is, though but one fourth of the people are engaged in useful production,, and they not to the best advantage, there is enough and to spare for all to live in comfort if the wealth created were equitably shared. At present the introduction of improved machinery is absolutely kept back by cheap labour and overwork of men, women, and children. A man, a woman, or a child costs less food, that is lessfodder or fuel, than a horse, a mule, or an engine. Such a state of things for the mass of the people as now exists- �13 we call anarchy—you call it order. You say gin drives to misery: we say nine times out of ten misery drives to gin. All the wretchedness and grinding competition you speak of at pp, io and n of your pamphlet are due to the system which you champion—the system, namely, of monopoly and luxury for the few, of bare subsistence wages, overwork, and drudgery for the many. They will be changed when that system is ■changed, and not till then. Production for profit means moral degradation not for one class alone but for all. I hope for a revolution, I strive for a revolution—peaceful if possible, forcible if need be. Re-organisation in some shape is essential, for nothing can be worse for the workers than the existing state of things. Under a system where all should work none would be deprived of wholesome leisure, and healthy enjoyment of natural beauty. There is no lack of room for workers, but drones and robbers have had their day. You say that I am guilty of misstatement about the number of landowners, and you refer me to that monsstrous fraud, the so-called “ New Doomsday Book ” of 1872. Surely you must be aware that the “ Financial ' Reform Almanack” long since showed that the number of landowners in that bogus return is deliberately multiplied over and over again. Walk down from your office to 50, Lord Street, oh statistical member for the city of Liverpool, and purchase for yourself, by the aid of one shilling, a copy of that most valuable compilation. By the way, 8,000 landowners pocket ^35,000,000 a year in rents. I have no special animosity against landowners myself for they are, economically speaking, mere hangers-on of the capitalists; but you are a Social �14 Reformer—not a Socialist, I’ll never accuse you of that again, believe me—so I should like to know whether you approve of that “ division ” of property? The point, however, we are at is the number of landowners. I don’t think, after your visit to Lord Street, you will quote that Blue Book of 1872 again where I am likely to hear of your doing so. 30,000 landowners over against 30,000,000 of people is still quite near enough to the facts for me. Those who hold building plots, though far fewer than you state, would gain infinitely more by securing the full fruits of their labour than they would lose under a socialist system by what they themselves might see fit to vote for the service of the state, As to the present condition of the land owing to bad seasons, American competition, and above all bad land-laws, I am perfectly advised. I am also aware that Lord Leicester, Sir John Lawes, Sir James Caird, and my friend, Mr. J. Boyd Kinnear, all estimate that under a proper system of cultivation the land of Great Britain would produce profitably more than twice what it pro­ duces at present. In conclusion I would recommend you to clear your mind of cant—Christian, capitalistic, or other cant—and to view these matters without bigotry and without pre­ judice. You evidently take the Bible in one hand and bourgeois economy in the other, and mix them carefully ip the interest of the possessing classes. “ He that hath let him grab more.” That is the sum and substance of your philosophy—social, economical, political, and religious. The class which provides the “ more ” begins to understand where wealth comes from, and in spite of all your rhetoric about Nihilism, Communism, and so �I5 forth, they protest against the confiscation, the neverceasing confiscation of labour which goes on at their expense. Ere long you will hear from them, in no gentle tones, the repetition of that commandment with which you began your letter, and I end mine :—“ Thou shalt NOT STEAL !” I am, Sir, Your most obedient, humble servant, London, November 2^th, 1883. H. M. HYNDMAN. To Samuel Smith, Esq., M.P., &c., &c., Liverpool. �Printed and Published at the Modern Press 13 & 14, Paternoster Row, London, E.C. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Socialism versus Smithism : an open letter from H. M. Hyndman to Samuel Smith, M. P. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hyndman, Henry Mayers [1842-1921] Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 15, [1] p. ; 19 cm. Notes: Sold for the benefit of the Democratic Foundation. End of text dated, London, November 24th, 1883. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [n.d.] Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context T464 Subject The topic of the resource Socialism Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Socialism versus Smithism : an open letter from H. M. Hyndman to Samuel Smith, M. P.), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Politics-Britain Samuel Smith Socialism https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/c0d3b7870d82d944a4f6963d068d3813.pdf?Expires=1779926400&Signature=sI9mail-o4cY8a6ncKRpPTeVTme322uJnGfF-x2OgQfii91Eue-ohWo0t5APwGZ6mgXmpG34CaehdvZnwrzKQjn6eBVNZURzPID-2FlQ1RHH9HFwmkZ1Ts5YWNKqHE962FwYVqldvluuTHZPH2Vqo-s%7EeVvFmWJlpz9k34CNjKJVfaaLkkygOCtsANvmizy8J4haBScz7zFwBtzJVIeVDqo9C%7EqEHNeMNYt5sgwtvYNhE5VDspBkdIzEF-VwYTyXV0ajXzAFspKIhFCCcPj4rYjK%7E7oLFt92ywDMrjK7IOdDThQF65SsatNsnnTW2YRAO1OrFyItJjOPDpObnrfeMQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 8c3752733b4a2938ba64f8b53512b731 PDF Text Text Price One Penny. THE Australian Labour Market. STARTLING DISCLOSURES. By JOHN NEW SOUTH WALES NORTON, LABOUR DELEGATE. Distress and Destitution in New South Wales. Pauper Relief Works & Soup Kitchens. BOGUS “EMIGRANTS’ INFORMATION OFFICE.” LONDON: THE MODERN PRESS, 13, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C 1886 �All who are interested. in Socialism should, read. THE FOLLOWING PUBLICATIONS , OF THE MODERN PRESS, 13, Paternoster Row, London, E.C. Which will be sent post free at the published prices on receipt of an order amounting to one shilling or more. (The Publications of the Modern Press can be obtained from W. L. Rosenberg, 261, East Tenth Street, New York City.) Woman, in the Past, Present and Future. By August ' Bebel, Deputy in the Reichstag. Translated from the German by H. B. Adams Walther. Demy 8-vo., cloth, price 5s. This work by the best known of the German Socialists aims at showing that the social condition of women can be permanently improved only by the solution of the whole social problem, The Co-operative Commonwealth: an Exposition of Modern Socialism. By Laurence Gronlund, of Philadelphia. Demy 8-vo., paper cover, is. This book supplies the want, frequently complained of, of definite proposals for the administration of a Socialistic State. Mr. Gronlund has reconciled the teaching of Marx with the influence of Carlyle in the constructive part of his work, which is specially recommended to English Socialists. Socialism made Plain. The social and political manifesto of the Social-Democratic Federation issued in June 1883 ; with “The Unemployed,” a Manifesto issued after the “ Riots in the West End” on 8th February, 1886. Sixty-first thousand. Crown 8-vo., paper cover, price id. “JUSTICE,” the Organ of the Social Democracy. Every Saturday, one penny. Socialist Rhymes from Justice. By J. L. Joynes. Reprinted chiefly Demy 8-vo., price id. Summary of the Principles of Socialism. By H. M. Hyndman and William Morris. Second edition, 64-pp. crown 8-vo., in wrapper designed by Wm. Morris, price 4d. This gives an account of the growth of capitalist production, and concludes with a statement of the demands of English Socialists for the immediate future. Herbert Spencer on Socialism. By Frank Fairman. 16-pp. crown 8-vo., price id. The Working Man’s Programme (Arbeiter Programm). By Ferdinand Lassalle. Translated from the German by Edward Peters. Crown 8-vo., paper cover, price 6d. The Robbery of the Poor. By W. H. P. Campbell. Demy 8-vo., paper cover, price 6d. The Appeal to the Young. By Prince Peter Kropotkin. Translated from the French by H. M. Hyndman and reprinted from Justice. Royal 8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny. The most eloquent and noble appeal to the generous emotions ever penned by a scientific man. Its author has just suffered five years’ imprisonment at the hands of the French Republic for advocating the cause of the workers �I PREFACE. VER since November 1883, when the facts of the destitution in E London and other large towns in the United Kingdom began to assert themselves in a way which compelled attention, Emigration has been put forward as a satisfactory remedy by the ruling classes and philanthropists, as well as by persons pecuniarily interested in the trans­ portation of workmen to the Colonies. Some of the advocates of State-assisted Emigration have been shown to be emigration agents in disguise who receive a commission of so much a head for each person they induce to leave these shores. Others are well-known to be in the pay of land syndicates or railway companies possessed of thousands of acres which are utterly valueless until labour has been planted on them. The Social-Democratic Federation has never ceased to denounce the misrepresentation and imposture which has led too many of our fellows to cross the ocean only to find that in newer countries the capitalist system of society condemns the worker to the same horrors as it pro­ duces at home. When the Government Emigrants’ Information Office was first talked of, the Social-Democratic Federation again pointed out that it could be of little advantage to the workers inasmuch as it would be controlled and supplied with information both here and in the Colonies by representatives of the classes who in England are interested in relieving social pressure by exiling the poor, and who in our dependencies favour immigration as an effective means .of overstocking the labour market and reducing wages. Every point of these contentions is amply proved in the following pages which I have persuaded Mr. John Norton to allow me to publish. He is not a Social-Democrat nor particularly interested as I am in the welfare of the unemployed in Great Britain. But as the accredited delegate of the labour population of New South Wales he is bound to defend their interests which, as is amply proved by Mr. Norton’s state­ ments, are threatened by the reckless misrepresentations of the Emigration Office. I venture to suggest that members of workmen’s clubs and political associations all over the country would do well to send resolu­ tions to the Government demanding that public money should not be expended in attempts to draw off public attention from the Social Question at home by transporting the victims to our Colonies and in supplying cheap labour to make the fortunes of employers at the Antipodes. H. H. Champion. Secretaries of Workmen’s Clubs or Labour Organisations who would like to hear an address by Mr. Norton on “ Australia as a Field for Emigration” should communicate with him at 166, Westminster Bridge Road, London. �THE AUSTRALIAN LABOUR MARKET. R. JOHN NORTON, the New South Wales Labour Dele­ gate, now on a mission to this country in connection with the industrial crisis at present existing in that Colony, having, in a letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, denounced the information circulated by the new Government Emigrants’ Informa­ tion Office as “ glaringly inaccurate, and entirely misleading,” received the following letter from that Department:— “ Emigrants’ Information Office, 31, Broadway, Westminster, S.W. “ John Norton, Esq., 16th October, 1886. “ Sir,—The Managing Committee of this Office have noticed a letter signed by you, and printed in the Daily News, to the effect that the in­ formation which they have issued about the labour market of New South Wales is ‘ glaringly inaccurate, and entirely misleading.’ “ Their only object being to ascertain and make known to the public the actual facts as to the prospects of labourers in the British Colonies, they would be glad to learn the grounds of your criticism, and in what respects the information in question is inaccurate and misleading. “ If you care to call at their office, and will make an appointment, I shall be glad to see you, and may add that any periodical reports issued by trade societies in Australia would be acceptable. “ Faithfully yours, (Signed) C. P. Lucas.” To which Mr. Norton has replied as follows:— “ 166, Westminster Bridge Road, S.E., October ¿.yrd, 1886. “To the Managing Committee of the Government Emigrants’ Information Office. “ Gentlemen,—In reply to your communication ofthe 16th inst. I beg leave to say that the grounds upon which I base the statement contained in my letter to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, ‘ that the infor­ mation recently issued by the Government. Emigrants’ Information Office concerning the labour market of New South Wales is glaringly maccurate, and entirely misleading,’ are the following :— ssssssss••• '.XVixWxW' �5 (a) On page 8 of the penny Colonisation Circular of New South Wales, sold by you, it is stated—‘ In New South Wales men accustomed to agricultural or pastoral work can readily obtain employment in any ■ part of the country districts at remunerative wages.' (b) On pages 9 and 10 of the same Circular you give a list of what purports to be the average rate of wages earned in the majority of skilled handicrafts in 1884 ; and on page 19 say, ‘ New South Wales, as compared with other, and even with the neighbouring colonies, pos­ sesses special advantages and attractions for the agricultural settler.’ (c) In the general broadsheet circular issued by you on the nth inst., and entitled, ‘ General Information for Intending Emigrants to Canada, the Australasian, and South African Colonies,’ under the heading of ‘Present Demand for Labour,’ the following statement appears ‘ New South Wales. There is some opening for persons connected with the building trades, for railway and agricultural labourers.’ I consider the whole of these statements not only ‘ glaringly inaccu­ rate, and entirely misleading,’ but positive misrepresentations of the real state of the labour market in New South Wales at the present time, which are all the more unwarrantable that they are made in the face of the following most full and clear evidence to the contrary. ’ AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS. The Sydney Globe newspaper of the 26th of July last states—* The stagnation in business resulting from the deadlock in the Western dis­ trict has at length attracted the attention of the Sydney Mercantile body. Work on the stations and homesteads of the Saltbush has ceased ; the contractors’ parties of tank sinkers and mechanics and waggoners have been dispersed, and are wandering over the country penniless. Sheep stations where 30 or 40 hands had been employed are now worked by 7 or 8 hands. The country towns feel the stoppage of circulation, and in Sydney the pinch is felt in the return of bills unpaid instead of the good remittances and fresh orders which came by every post while the industry of the interior was maintained.’ On the 30th of the same month the Globe, in drawing attention to the deplorable condition of the agricultural portion of the population of New South Wales, and to the fact that they could not compete against the wheat which was being landed in Sydney from Bombay at 4s. ¿d. per bushel, observes: ‘ With his hundred acres, his hut, his children dressed in flour-bags, his crop mortgaged before it is ripe, his utter hopelessness of any fair or satisfactory progress, or of emancipation from the debt which was bound around his neck on the day he settled on the soil, is not the settler ground almost to death in the cruel mill of competition ? ’ To that part of Statement No. 2, where you say that, ‘ New South Wales, as compared with other, and even the neighbouring colonies, possesses special advantages and attractions for the agricultural settler,’ I take exception ; and likewise to your remark that ‘ more than onethird of the population of New South Wales is resident in Sydney and its suburbs, consequently, the remainder of the colony is comparatively thinly populated.’ The first of these two statements is inaccurate, and the second is misleading. New South Wales does not possess any ‘ special advantages and attractions for the agricultural settler ’ over Victoria. Her bad land laws, together with the droughts and outside r �6 j , competition, combine to make it difficult for the small farmers and settlers to live on the land, and to drive them into the towns. This is why one-third of the whole population is, unfortunately, to be found in Sydney and its suburbs. The area of New South Wales is 310,938 square miles, or 199,000,000 acres ; that of Victoria 87,884 square miles, or 56,245,760 acres. Notwithstanding her vast area, New South Wales has a somewhat smaller population than Victoria, and has only 852,017 acres under cultivation ; whereas Victoria, although nearly three-and-ahalf times smaller, has no less than 2,323,496 acres under cultivation, i.e., 1,471,479 acres more than the mother colony, which has twice the age of Victoria. In 1884 Victoria produced 10,967,088 more bushels of wheat, oats, and barley than New South Wales. These few significant figures do not, I think, indicate that New South Wales possesses, at present, any ‘ special advantages and attractions for the agricultural settler ’ over her Victorian neighbour, at least. ARTISANS AND MECHANICS. Since my arrival in this country I have received reports from nearly every handicraft exercised in the Colony, which shows that almost every branch of industry, and especially the building trade, is in a terribly depressed state, as the following summary shows. CARPENTERS and JOINERS.—Mr. Francis Willes, Secretary, N.S.W. Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, in a letter dated Sydney, June nth says: ‘the state of this trade is very dull, a great number being out of work.’ A report from Mr. J. C. Simpson, Secretary, Sydney Progressive Society of Carpenters and Joiners, dated June 9th, states : ‘This society is of opinion that state-assisted immi­ gration should cease ; and we would warn all mechanics from coming to this colony, as trade is very bad and may remain so for some con­ siderable time yet.’ These reports are more than confirmed by the Sydney press, which shows that instead of improving, this trade has become still worse. The Sydney Morning Herald of the 19th of August, states: ‘ For some considerable time past the building trade has been unusually slack, and, in consequence, many carpenters and joiners have been thrown out of employment, so much so that about a fortnight ago it was deemed necessary to call a meeting of the unemployed carpenters and joiners to consider what was to be done. At the meeting a committee was appointed to wait upon the Hon. the Minister for Works to ascertain if any Government works could be commenced to absorb the unemployed labour. After considerable agitation and many inter­ views it was announced that employment would be found for fifty carpenters and joiners under the Railway Department, but upwards of 300 have given in their names as out of work and needing employment. The fifty men required were drafted out on Monday, but the list of names requiring work had considerably increased, and on Tuesday after­ noon it was decided to hold another meeting at the usual place, the statue at the top of King Street. At the time of meeting between 300 and 400 persons had assembled. Mr. Thomas Symons, Secretary of the Trades and Labour Council addressed the meeting. It was decided to appoint a Committee to again interview the Minister for Works, to endeavour to urge upon him the necessity of opening up other public works, so that work can be obtained by the unemployed carpenters and joiners. It was stated that many of the unemployed had been from two �7 to four months out of work, and consequently, much distress prevailed amongst them.’ The Sydney Globe, of the 21st of August states, ‘ Mr. O’Sullivan, M.L.A., to-day introduced a deputation of unemployed Carpenters to the Minister for Works, requesting him to give them work. Mr. Thomas Symons, having stated the case of the men, showing that there were still, nearly 400 carpenters out of work and in distress ; Mr. Lyne, the Minister for Works, said that he had already strained his department, to find work for fifty of their number, and he could not find work for more till some of the railway lines were adopted. They would then get work on the permanent way and bridges. Till then he would endeavour to get them employment at roadmaking.’ STONEMASONS.—Numbers of the hands in this trade are out of work, which is largely owing to the extensive importation of dressed stone from Victoria and elsewhere ; in consequence of which the Sydney Globe, of the 24th August last, states: ‘ that the Government has pro­ mised to use native stone wherever possible, and to place a duty on the imported stone.’ BRICKMAKERS.—Messrs. A. Boot, President, and J. Cook, Secre­ tary, of the N.S.W. Brickmakers, Brickmakers’ Labourers, and Pipe­ makers’ Union, state: ‘so far as the Labour market in our trade is concerned, we are sorry to say that it is now very much overstocked, hundreds of our men are now walking about the streets of Sydney.’ Most of the brickyards in the Colony work eight hours per day, but the larger yards having refused to recognise the eight hours’ principle, the brickmakers there have gone on strike, their action being supported by all the other trades. It is hoped by the reduction of the hours of labour of those employed, the over production will cease, and work will be provided for the unemployed brickmakers. Large quantities of bricks are being offered at £■$ per thousand. Thus it will be seen that your statements that ‘ there are some openings in the building trades and for railway and agricultural labourers ’ is glaringly inaccurate. A precisely similar state of things exists inmost of the other leading trades included in your list of average wages, as a cursory glance at their condition will suffice to prove. IRON TRADE.—A Special Committee of the New South Wales Engineering Association appointed to inquire into the state of the iron trade in the colony reported on the 30th of June last to the effect that the trade throughout all its branches was in a thoroughly depressed state ; and ‘ that there. was not a single factory which employed more than one tenth of the workmen which the establishment was capable of accommodating, to say nothing of the vast amount of expensive plant lying idle, whilst a large number of firms had had to stop their engines, there not being work enough to keep even the apprentices employed.’ In a report dated Lithgow, N.S.W., July 24th, Mr. H. S. Jones, Secre­ tary of the Eskbank Ironworkers, reports that the puddlers, heaters, shinglers, rollers and other hands at the Eskbank Works are only working half-time, and that a large blast furnace, which was at work four years ago, has since had to be blown out and pulled down for want of work. There were formerly eight puddling furnaces at work here, but, owing to the collapse of the iron trade, some of them have been pulled down and the plates broken up. Mr. Jones concludes his report as follows ;—‘ To any ironworkers who are thinking of coming out to this ■colony in the hope of obtaining employment in their trade, we would �8 say be warned, be careful, we cannot hold out any hope of work whatso­ ever.’ Another report from the New South Wales Friendly Society of Ironmoulders, and signed by A. Hollis, President, W. Walker, Check Steward, W. Jones, Secretary, and by all the members of the General Committee of the Society, shows that a similar state of things exists in the other provincial ironworks ; and it is stated that the Fitzroy Iron­ works at Mittagong, are likely to be shut down this year for want of work. COACH MAKERS.—In a report dated Sydney, June gth, Mr. T. Halliday, Secretary of the New South Wales Coachmakers’ Society, says : ‘ This trade is at present in a very depressed state, one firm alone having discharged thirty hands, and the greater number of factories are only working half-time.’ This report is confirmed by the Sydney Globe of August 28th, according to which a conference of the employers and employed, in the coachmaking trade, met at the Foresters’ Hall, Sydney, on the 27th of August, to consider the present depression. The same paper stated that large numbers of men were out of work, and that the trade was rapidly declining to utter ruin, hardly any of the factories being more than mere repairing shops, and that such depression had not been known for thirty years. THE SADDLE, HARNESS, AND COLLAR MAKERS’Society of New South Wales in a report dated Sydney, June 14th, and signed by J. Cronin, President, W. S. Harper, Treasurer, and G. Stuart, Secre­ tary, states: ‘ This particular trade is now and, in fact, has been for a number of years past in a very depressed condition, owing mainly to the great importations free of duty from England, the Continent of Europe and elsewhere, which have the effect of glutting the markets here, and underselling and driving the local manufacturers out of the market, except in a few cases where the article cannot be imported. The long-continued drought has played havoc, financially, with the farmers and pastoralists of the colony who are the classes from whom we derive the most support.’ BOOT AND SHOE MAKERS.—Mr. W. P. White, Secretary of the New South Wales Amalgamated Operative Boot Trade Union writing under date June 14th observes: ‘ During from four to six weeks of the year men of this trade are idle from want of continuous employment, and many hands are paid off in the various factories ; but this year it has been greater than previously. The men are willing to leave the trade when they can get a chance of turning their attention to other things.’ This account is corroborated by an official report on the state of this trade published in the Sydney Globe of the 24th of August last under the heading ‘ Alarming Depression in the Boot Trade,’ in which is given an account of the state of trade from no less than thirty of the managers or proprietors of different boot and shoe factories in and around Sydney. For obvious reasons the employers did not wish their real names to appear in this ominous report, so their names were sup­ pressed, and indicated by consecutive numbers. The following is a summary of this report:— No. 1. Very slack : closes on Friday until noon on Monday; has done so for the last seven weeks. No. 2. Very slack: closed from Thursday to Monday during the last five weeks. �9 No. 3. One of the largest m the colony. Has discharged a great number of hands ; those retained work only seven hours per day for five days, and are generally paid at 11 o’clock on Saturdays. No. 4. Men engaged have not averaged two days per week for the last six weeks. No. 5. Discharged half the hands nine weeks ago; those retained Work irregularly. No. 6. Trade falling off ; factory closed two days last week. No. 7. Usually employed ten makers and a number of finishers ; now employ only two makers, whose average is not more than two days per week for the last five weeks. No. 8. Usually employed four makers and two finishers. This factory closed for a week, then re-opened with one maker and one finisher, the remainder being discharged. No. 9. No cause for complaint. No. 10. Has discharged one-third of employés ; those retained average Only three days per week. No. 11. Has been closed for the last twelve weeks, with the exception Of a few apprentices and one man over them. Nos. 12 and 13. Have been closed for the last three weeks. No. 14. Has discharged several hands ; those retained work only at intervals. No. 15. Trade so slack that the whole of the employés with the exception of three women’s workmen, were put off the whole of last week. No. 16. Very slack; discharged the majority of workmen; those retained average two and a half to three days per week. No. 17. Discharged half of hands five weeks ago; the remainder working casually. No. 18. Doing fairly well. No. 19. Closed for the last five weeks. No. 20. Very dull. No. 21. Closed for the last ten weeks. No. 22. Doing a fair trade. No. 23. Very slack. No. 24. The largest factory in the Colony. Closes at 1 o’clock on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and on Friday all work has to be completed by 11'30 a.m.; pay is issued one hour later; the factory is then closed until the following Monday. This system has been in operation for the last three weeks. In this factory some of the hands who have done exhibition work, that has taken first prizes, are now making copper toes, and are doing other work usually done by apprentices and lads. No. 25. Discharged eighteen hands ; remainder doing limited work. Most of weekly hands’ wages reduced, some to the extent of ten shillings per week. No. 26. Had but one full week during last eight weeks, the average being three days per week. No. 27. Trade very dull. No. 28. Very dull; majority of employés walking about. No. 29. Firm completely ruined. The whole of the plant was taken and sold about six weeks ago. This report further states that there a’re now between 600 and 700 �IO boot and shoemakers out of work in Sydney alone; and that so deep and wide spread is the misery amongst them, that numbers of them are now blacking shoes and selling newspapers in the streets of Sydney, in order to provide an honest crust for their starving wives and children. COOPERS.—Messrs. John Strange, President: Henry McPhillips, Secretary: John Quain, Treasurer, and five members of the Committee of the N.S.W. Journeymen Coopers’ Society, in a report, dated from Sydney in June last, after drawing a most gloomy picture of the de­ pressed condition of the Coopers’ trade, states : ‘ In conclusion we would strongly recommend our fellow countrymen in Great Britain and Ireland to pause and consider before taking the important step of emigrating to this country, at least, until they receive a more favourable report from the trade. We hope that this report, will be the means of preventing much misery and disappointment. There are hundreds here who would be glad to return to England if they had the chance.’ WHEELWRIGHTS AND BLACKSMITHS.—Messrs W. M’Carty, President, and G. B. James, Secretary, of the N.S.W. Amalgamated Society of Wheelwrights and Blacksmiths, state: ‘An almost continuous depression has existed in our trade for a period of two years, with very little prospect of improvement. This state of things we attribute to a recurrence of bad seasons in the pastoral and agricultural districts of the Colony. The labour market is glutted owing to the influx of immi­ grants.’ FARRIERS.—In a report dated Sydney, June nth, Mr. R. F. Bosden, Secretary of the N.S.W. Journeymen Farriers’ Society, says: ‘The trade is very brisk from November to April; from April to November it is very dull. There are plenty of farriers out of work, and numbers of apprentices finishing their time every week.’ PATTERN MAKERS.—In a letter to the New South Wales Trades and Labour Council, dated Sydney, June 7th, Mr. E. W. McIntosh, Secretary of the N.S.W. Branch of the Australasian Pattern Makers’ Society, says: ‘ In reply to your memorandum of the 3rd inst., in refer­ ence to the departure of Mr. John Norton as Delegate from the Council to England, I beg to state, for Mr. Norton’s information, that our trade has been very dull for nearly two years, during which time very few pattern makers can boast of constant work. State-assisted immigra­ tion is strongljz protested against by our society.’ FURNITURE TRADE.—A report of the N.S.W. United Furniture Trade Society, dated Sydney, June last, shows that this trade is at a standstill in consequence of the competition of the Chinese, and the wholesale importation of furniture from Europe and America. COAL-MINERS. —Mr. James Curley, General Secretary of the Hunter River Miners’ Mutual Protective Association, N.S.W., writes in June last: ‘ Speaking of this (the Newcastle Mining district) it is literally crammed with labour. The gradual influx of immigrants, from time to time, has, at last, swamped the mining labour market. The trade of the district is fully supplied with a surplus of 400 to 500 men.’ Mr. John Owens, Secretary of the Western Branch of the N.S.W. Coal Miners’ Mutual Protective Association, writing on the 5th June last, states : ‘ Trade is not brisk on account of their being too many men. The opinion of this Association is that State-assisted immigration is very undesirable, as the supply of labour in this district exceeds the demand.’ �11 According to a report in the Sydney Globe of August 21st, two mines at Captain’s Flat, Queanbey an, have recently been closed; and the miners thus thrown out of work—who have not been paid for eight weeks, —are in a state of semi-destitution. In answer to a petition signed by 100 of these miners, the Minister for Works has promised, if possible, to find them employment at road making, and to pay them out of the fund for the maintenance of the unemployed. The same paper states that the Vale of Clwydd mine has stopped, the manager having been instructed ‘ to stop work until further. orders. The proprietors of the. Mount Keira and Mount Kembla collieries, in the southern district of N.S.W., have recently given notice, to reduce the miners’ wages after the nth ultimo. The whole of the coal­ mining industry is in a very depressed state. COAL TRIMMERS.—Mr. William Cremor, Secretary of the New­ castle Coal Trimmers’ Provident Union, N.S.W., writing under date June 7th, says : ‘ We have 150 members on the roll, and these are only working half-time. At no time has the full number been employed. There are too many workers for the amount of work to be done. The mines are full, and every trade is more than full}7 supplied with labour. Newcastle and the mining district could part with, at least, 1,000 men, and leave but a moderate living for those remaining. In the present circumstances, State-assisted emigration is a grievous wrong, doubly inflicted; first, upon those who are already here, and, secondly, upon those who are brought here. The majority of the new comers merely gwell the ranks of the unemployed or help to reduce wages by accepting lower rates, or, if attached to a Union, by further dividing the amount of work to be done. At present we are making about 30s. per week.’ WHARF LABOURERS.—Mr. T. McKillop, President of the Sydney Wharf Labourers’ Union, writing from Sydney under date, June nth, says : ‘ I beg leave to say that the present mode of assisted immigration is ruinous to the Colonies, as it tends to flood the labour market.’ This is very plain evidence that the New South Wales labour.market in the above branches is in an absolutely congested state ; and it is the same in nearly every other branch. Not one of the trades named in your list of trades and average rates of wages can be said to be prosperous. Both the agricultural and manufacturing industries in New South Wales are stagnant. It is true that you make the rates quoted apply to 1884, and state that they are subject to fluctuations, but the depression was nearly as bad in 1884 as it is now, and the only fluctuation has been from bad to worse. Even if the state of things in 1884 had been appreciably better than it is now, I protest against the data of 1884 being made to apply to 1886, when, as I have shown, every branch of industry is depressed, and large sections of the New South Wales working-classes are suffering the acutest distress, many of them being positively destitute. GOLD-MINING.—There is a very erroneous and dangerous impres­ sion abroad here, which has been fostered by the foolish statements of persons who should know better, that if an artisan or agricultural labourer, on arriving in the Colonies, cannot find work at his accus­ tomed occupation, he can easily turn his attention to gold-mining. Apart from the fact that the alluvial diggings, where individuals with little or no capital formerly managed to gain a livelihood, are. now exhausted, the more important fact that a man to succeed in mining �12 must have extensive experience of the most hard and practical kind, seems to be generally lost sight of here. The days of successful indi­ vidual effort in gold-mining have long since passed away ; and what is required now-a-days is special knowledge, long experience, and, above all, capital. Mining m the Colonies has now entered on the scientific stage; and, except in very rare instances, is only successful when pur­ sued on an extensive scale, with large capital and under the direction of experts. The exciting stories about the wealth of the Kimberley gold fields, are, for the most part, exaggerations, and even experienced miners should await further information before joining in the ‘ rush.’ Over and over again the Australian newspapers have warned the public against rashly venturing into the Kimberley district, and have pointed out the hardships and perils to be encountered on the way thither and on the field itself. Travellers who have returned from Kimberley have warned diggers not to venture in less numbers than parties of six, with, at least, a couple of horses a-piece, and supplies for six months. Therefore, no man should venture unless he has a small capital of between ^200 and ^300, to defray outfit, cost of supplies, expenses of transit by sea, journey across country, and expenses of return journey in case of failure. Yet in spite of multiplied warnings, hundreds have recklessly ventured, illequipped, and badly provided, with the result that many of them have perished either by the spears of the blacks or have been “ bushed,” and perished miserably of hunger and thirst; while others, who have escaped these perils, have been unable to return, and have had to gain their bread by working on the roads, or by sweeping the streets of Derby. For an agricultural labourer or mechanic to go to the colonies with the idea of gaining a livelihood, let alone a fortune at gold-mining, is sheer insanity. There are thousands of experienced European miners and swarms of Chinese on the spot, who are unable to make a living at it. Your Publications concerning New South Wales are full of inaccu­ racies and misleading statements too numerous to particularise at greater length. This is not at all astonishing, seeing that you are issuing old information no longer applicable to the colony. Your publications appear to have been compiled from books and pamphlets of the Agent-General, which have been proved over and over again, both by the working-classes in New South Wales, and by returned emigrants here in England, to be totally unreliable. The circulation of such out-of-date and unreliable information appears all the more in­ excusable that no effort appears to have been made to revise it. On behalf of those whom I represent, I have to complain that sources of the most reliable and complete information concerning the present state of the Labour Market in New South Wales have been ignored. Towards the end of last Session, Mr. Burt, the member for Morpeth, presented three petitions to Parliament against State-assisted-immigration to New South Wales (1) from the Trades’ and Labour Council; (2) from the Democratic Alliance ; and (3) from the Federated Seamen’s Union, of that colony. All three of these petitions were nearly identical in tenor and text; and from one of them 1 quote the second clause :— ‘ That whereas there has been a dearth of employment for skilled ‘ artisans and general labourers during the past few years, the Govern‘ ment has continued to pour into the country shiploads of immigrants ‘ for whom no work could be found. Thousands of skilled artisans, �* enticed out to this country by fallacious promises of constant employ‘ ment at high wages, have been compelled to accept work as navvies ‘ on the relief works started by the Government of New South ‘ Wales, for the relief of the distress caused by the surplus labour 1 created by the system of State-assisted immigration. During ‘ the last three or four years the numbers of the unemployed ‘ have increased every year, until this year they may be numbered in ‘ thousands. Last year hundreds of skilled artisans were walking the ‘ streets of Sydney without employment, or food or shelter. They were ' found by hundreds sleeping in the public streets and gardens, until, in ‘ deference to a strong public agitation which took place, the Govern‘ ment was compelled to provide them with temporary shelter, together ‘ with one blanket each, with bread and cheese to keep them from ‘ starving. Relief works had then to be started in order to grapple with ‘ the difficulty. The same state of things has occurred again this year. ‘ Large meetings of the unemployed have been held in Sydney ; the • Government have been compelled to start relief works anew, and to ‘ establish a Special Government Bureau for dispersing the unemployed ‘ workmen throughout the colony by means of free railway passes which ‘ have been issued in thousands to the unemployed. The men thus ‘ supplied with free railway passes instead of finding employment, have ‘ been compelled to tramp up and down the country in search of work, ‘ suffering greatly from exposure and hunger, and finally forced to accept ‘ work at pauper wages at roadmaking, bush-clearing, stone breaking on ‘ Government Relief Works.’ These petitions, containing such startling information, do not appear to have been deemed worthy of notice, as you make no reference to them, although they have been frequently referred to and quoted in the London and Provincial press. In like manner the Official Report of the Third Inter-Colonial Trades’ Union Congress of Australasia, which met in Sydney in October last year, has been ignored, although it contains the most full and reliable information as to the state of the whole Labour Market of all the Australasian Colonies. But apart from these sources of information—than which none could be more trustworthy—the statements concerning the depres­ sion actually existing in the Labour Market of New South Wales with which the newspapers of that Colony are full, have not been even noticed by you. None of the above newspaper extracts, which are taken from the files of the Sydney papers received by the two last mails, have been pub­ lished by you. Neither have my reiterated warnings to intending emigrants, both in the press, and at public meetings, not to venture to New South Wales during the present crisis; nor has the statement recently made by Sir Patrick Jennings, the Premier of the Colony, to the effect that in consequence of the general depression, the deficit this year would pro­ bably amount to ¿"2,000,000 sterling, recommended itself to your notice. Had the latest files of the Sydney papers been consulted such distressing accounts as the following, taken from the Sydney Globe, of the 23rd of August last, would, perhaps, have in­ duced you to considerably modify some of your statements with regard to New South Wales : ‘THE UNEMPLOYED IN MELBOURNE, It is now clearly manifest, consist in a great measure, of men �who have recently arrived in that city from poverty-stricken South Australia. On the other hand, the unemployed in Sydney are a solid substantial fact, and an overwhelming majority of their number ■consists of men who have been identified with Sydney for years. During the past six months more than 6,000 unemployed persons have been provided for by the Government either at the Rookwood, Little Bay, Middle Harbour, Field of Mars, and other ■camps, or by granting them free passes to country districts. The Supply Bill now brought before Parliament contains the item of £25,000 for the unemployed, and no amount of sophistry will rub this fact out. The ■expenditure for the unemployed is still going on, and it will probably total £50,000 before the end is reached. In addition to all this we have nearly 400 carpenters asking the Minister for Works to give them work; Coachmakers in destitution and distress ; something like 5,000 Ironworkers who have only partial employment; while Saddlemakers, Bootmakers and other indoor workers, are bitterly com­ plaining of the hard times and scarcity of work.’ From the same source could have been learned the fact that private charity is being invoked on every hand to alleviate the widespread misery and ■destitution among the working-classes of New South Wales, and that in Sydney, as in London, NIGHT REFUGES AND SOUP KITCHENS. find more than their legitimate share of hunger and starvation to relieve. According to the Report presented to the igth Annual Meeting of the City Night Refuge and Soup Kitchen Charity held in Sydney on the 1st of last month, when Sir Alfred Stephen, the Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, occupied the chair: ‘ It was shown that the number of meals given away during the past twelve months was 65,685 ; and that shelter for the night had been afforded in 25,851 instances.’ Unless such information as this is taken into consideration and given its due weight by you when compiling and authorising the issue of your ■official circulars respecting the state of the labour market of New South Wales, the utility of such an organisation as that which you control is utterly destroyed. If such information as I have now placed before you •can be legitimately ignored, I respectfully submit that the public have been entirely misled concerning the nature of your functions ; and that instead of being an organisation for disseminating trustworthy informa­ tion concerning Her Majesty’s Colonies, the action of the Government Emigrants’ Information Office is rather calculated to have the effect of ■shifting the burden of the social evils of this country on to the young and struggling communities abroad, amongst which, as in the case of New South Wales, dire distress and deep destitution already exist. At the very outset of its career the Emigrants’ Information Office begins by creating doubt as to the thorough reliability of the information it issues. At the head of all its broad-sheets, hand-books, and pam­ phlets it is stated that ‘ this office has been established for the purpose of supplying intending emigrants with useful and trustworthy informa­ tion respecting the British colonies . . . but that the committee of management cannot undertake to hold themselves responsible for the absolute correctness of every detail.’ Now this would, perhaps, be all very well if those portions of the information, the correctness of which the committee do not undertake to guarantee, were plainly indicated ; »■V .v'S'" �i5 but, as it is, the euquirer does not know what is reliable and what is not, and thus the value of the whole is utterly destroyed. I take it that the, money of the British taxpayer ought not to be spent in disseminating one tittle of information calculated to promote emigration that cannot be relied upon ; and the correctness of the information supplied by this Government office ought to be guaranteed, or the information not issued at all. In the name of the working classes of New South Wales, I have to enter a most emphatic protest against the careless manner in which the business of the Government Emigrants’ Information Office is being carried on. I respectfully suggest that the circulation of the publications respecting New South Wales, now being issued by you, should be at once stopped ; and that until they have been thoroughly revised, and made to give a more correct account of the state of the labour market in that colony, no further issue of them should be authorised. I have the honour to be, Gentlemen, Your obedient Servant, JOHN NORTON, New South Wales Labour Delegate. .A oxid ai byJIlhv. ’ 51 0 Oxfit jbms 3ilT i .A .11 wl, .aoJBta botrnU i.0 1TOJ1 10T fbi /. i 291'8 HO ; di .lb... xbbA gninoq bid 9X11 /. .H y«T . I 1 Juj/ j > iij ai ^¡¡¡T �Wage-Labour and Capital. From the German of Karl Marx translated by J. L. Joynes and reprinted from Justice. New and cheaper edition, Royal 8-vo., price id. By Edward Carpenter.—Social Progress and Indi­ vidual Effort; Desirable Mansions ; and Co-operative Production. One penny each. The Man with the Red Flag : Being John Burns’ Speech at the Old Bailey, when tried for Seditious Conspiracy, on April 9th, 1886. (From the Verbatim Notes of the official short­ hand reporter.) With Portrait. Price threepence. The Socialist Catechism. By J. L. Joynes. Reprinted with additions from Justice. Demy 8-vo., price id. 20th thousand. Socialism and Slavery. By H. M. Hyndman, (in reply to Mr. Herbert Spencer’s article on “The Coming Slavery.”) New Edition, with portrait. 16 pp. Royal 8-vo., price one penny. The Emigration Fraud Exposed. By H. M. Hyndman. With a Portrait of the Author. Reprinted by per­ mission from the Nineteenth for February, 1885. Crown 8-vo. price one penny. What an Eight Hours Bill Means. By T. Mann (Amalgamated Engineers). New edition with portrait. Thousand. Price one penny. Sixth Socialism versus Smithism: An open letter from H. M. Hyndman to Samuel Smith, M.P. for Liverpool. 8-vo. Cheaper edition, price id. Socialism and the Worker. Price id. By F. A. Crown Some. An explanation in the simplest language of tne main idea of Socialism. The Chicago Riots and the Class War in the United States. By H. M. Hyndman. Reprinted from Time, June, 1886. Price one penny. International Trade Union Congress, held at Paris, August, 1886. Report by Adolphe Smith. Price Three-Halfpence. 24-pp., Royal 8-vo’. John E. Williams, and the Early History of THE SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC FEDERATION. trait. Price one penny. With Por­ Opening Address to the Trade Union Congress at Southport, September, 1885. Delivered by T. R. Threlfall. Royal 8-vo., 16-pp. Price one penny. An able address from a representative working man on political and social topics. The Historical Basis of Socialism in England. By H. M. Hyndman. Paul, Trench, & Co. Crown 8-vo., price 8s. 6a London: Kegan This is the only Book in the English Language which gives the Historical and Economical Theories of Organised Socialism. It should be carefully studied by all who desire to understand why Socialists are enthusiastic for their cause, and confident of uccess in the near future. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Australian labour market: startling disclosures Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Norton, John Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 15, [1] p. ; 23 cm. Notes: Publisher's list on preliminary page, Other works on socialism listed on unnumbered back page. Title page beneath author has text: 'Distress and destitution in New South Wales - Pauper Relief works & soup kitchens - Bogus 'emigrants' information office'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available The Modern Press Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1886 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context G4970 Subject The topic of the resource Australia Socialism Labour Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (The Australian labour market: startling disclosures), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Australia Labour and labouring classes Poverty Socialism